


The Monster of Blackspire

by waveleafcloud



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams, Fairy Tale Curses, Inception - Freeform, M/M, Pandora's Box, Post-Season/Series 03, Story within a Story, The Snow Queen - Freeform, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 08:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21715201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveleafcloud/pseuds/waveleafcloud
Summary: Season 4 was a curse.  No, really.(The one where Quentin’s actually trapped in Blackspire the whole time, and all is not as it seems.)
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 150
Kudos: 365





	1. Curses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, everything I write just keeps getting more bizarre. This story is canon divergent from the end of season 3, as well as a season 4 fix-it, but is also somehow a vague pastiche with _Inception_, “The Snow Queen,” and the myth of Pandora’s box. 
> 
> I don’t think you need to have watched/read the originals to follow the plot, but passing familiarity with the premise of _Inception_ will probably help, so if you haven’t seen it, check out the chapter end notes for a (spoiler-free) primer, as well as more details on the various inspirations for this story.

_Well, there are prisons, and then there are prisons._

**i. Mirrors**

A quest can end with a hero’s sacrifice. The object of the quest achieved, order restored, and a noble death mourned.

This is how the story ends: Quentin Coldwater opens a door.

* * *

Seven people wake up on the floor, gasping for air.

“Everyone,” barks Margo, “write it down before you fucking forget this time!”

Eliot grasps blindly for the notebook and pen laid out beside his body, waiting for him. Still disoriented, and absolutely certain he’s not managing to write on the lines, he scrawls out what he remembers from the dream.

Then he passes out again.

The next time they all wake up, it’s more gradual, and it feels a lot more like a bad hangover than the throes of an acid trip. People start dragging themselves into seats in a vague approximation of a circle in the main room of the Physical Kids’ Cottage, their acting home base for now, each holding a sheet of paper.

“This is like the beginning of a really bad college poetry slam,” Josh remarks.

“Or an AA meeting,” Kady replies.

“On that note,” Eliot says, swanning back into the room carrying a tray, because he’s a good host, and because acid trips and hangovers are both things he has some experience dealing with, “does anyone want a drink before we begin?” He’s handing one to Margo already.

One by one, they all take a glass. Alice hesitates, last, but then she grabs hers and knocks it back in one go.

“Okay,” Eliot says delicately, setting the tray down and taking his place in the circle (on the couch by Margo).

“Let’s just get this over with,” Alice says. She reads, “I betrayed everyone, and destroyed the keys. And then I was imprisoned in the Library, and convinced I had to save everyone, because the Monster had been released. Quentin couldn’t stand to look at me. But then he wanted to get back together, which we did. Then we went to the Mirror World, and he died.”

“Wow,” Josh says, from next to her. “You remembered all that clearly, in order, and wrote it down? Impressive.”

“It’s almost coherent,” Eliot agrees. “I mean, not the plotting, that’s shoddy, but the fact that you wrote in complete sentences after waking up from the spell should be applauded. Anyhow. Next?”

“Uh, well, Alice has set the bar high,” Josh says. He looks down at his notes. “Mine is much more fragmented. Abstract art, let’s say. But: I fucked Margo. And got turned into a fish she had to watch. I think it was more romantic than it sounds, because I drew a lot of hearts here. But not much about Quentin. Except maybe something with cake?”

No one says anything for a long moment, although Margo’s making a face like she’s finding some choice words.

Eliot clears his throat, since he’s apparently moderating this dream sharing session now. “All right. Moving on,” he prompts.

“I don’t think I’m going to be much help either,” Kady says. “There was a thing with Baba Yaga. Also, I led a revolution, and got poisoned. Huh. Maybe not in that order.” She shrugs.

“I was a goddess,” Julia begins. “I gave up my powers to create keys, like Prometheus did, when Alice destroyed the ones we had. Then, Q and I were working on building something, for the Monster, in Eliot’s body, but then I think I was possessed. By the Monster’s sister. Which… who?”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” Margo says. “Because you _were_ a goddess, right? Ascended to a higher plane, here in this Cottage. We all remember that, right? In reality, I mean, not the dream.” They all nod. “And you did give up your powers to create an extra set of keys at the last minute.”

“But it wasn’t because Alice betrayed us,” Kady points out. “It was because we needed an extra set of keys to get magic back.”

“The key paradox!” Josh says. “One set to open the front door, another to unlock the Wellspring.”

Eliot thinks about it. “So this is where the stories diverge,” he says. “Julia fucks off to be a goddess, the rest of us all take the Muntjac to Blackspire. Q said he had another way into the castle, that the knight-jailer person whose place he was taking would help us get in.”

“Ora,” Julia interrupts.

“Okay, fine, Ora. But she wasn’t there. No one let us in. So then, we used the keys to get inside anyway, because we’d come that far, and there had to be another way, some kind of trick.”

“Yeah, but the door turned out to be a swallower after all. No more keys.” Margo, of course.

“Right,” Julia picks it up. “That’s when I could feel that something was wrong. That you guys were going to fail unless I helped you. And that Q was in danger.”

“And then you showed up out of nowhere, gave up your powers to make new keys, and we got magic back,” Kady says.

“We opened the door to the Wellspring. There was a flash of light. Bright, blinding light—” Josh says.

“And then we woke up on the Muntjac, and Quentin was fucking gone,” Margo finishes.

“So that’s what really happened. Agreed?” Eliot asks, and no one disagrees. “But in the dream, we did get in without using the keys. Q went off with the woman, Ora, to meet this Monster thing.”

“You followed him, with the god-killing bullet,” Margo says. “I remember sending you off.”

“I shot the Monster, and we thought it was dead, but…”

“I betrayed you all,” Alice repeats, “and destroyed the keys.”

“And _then_ I came down and gave up my powers to create more…”

“And then the fucking Library and Fogg fucked us over,” Kady says slowly. “They took our memories or something, remember?”

“This is like, dream-within-a-dream confusing,” Josh says. “Was I a limo driver for a while?”

“Okay,” Eliot tries. “Let’s just keep going around the circle. Maybe we’re missing something. Penny?”

The other Penny, who’s been silent thus far, shakes his head. “Mine is more confusing than anyone’s. I know I helped save Julia from the Monster’s sister, but I took away her magic, somehow. I met my other self. The one from your timeline. But I think I also _was_ him? Or became him? It’s like I was playing both parts, I’m not sure. But I—as the other me—led Coldwater through a door into the Underworld.”

“Identity crises all around,” Margo mutters. Then, she turns to Eliot. “I gave up being High King for you. I screamed my rage in the desert. My heat-and-sand hallucination of you looked fucking hot, by the way,” she adds, patting Eliot’s shoulder, which actually does make him feel a little better about the whole fucked up situation. Oh, Bambi, always with the right thing to say, Eliot thinks, wrapping an arm around her. “We got you back. But then, Q—”

“Yeah. So, do we all remember that god-awful bonfire with the song?” Eliot asks the group at large.

Kady grimaces. “Oh yeah, can’t believe that one was me.”

“So we all got sucked into it. We were trying to incept Quentin, to communicate with him, but his mind…”

“Wait,” Alice interrupts. “You didn’t say what you experienced in the dream after shooting the Monster.”

Eliot looks down at his paper. He’s written: “Possessed by Monster. Escape from Happy Place = throne room. Bambi axe, Q dead. Burned a PEACH, mf.”

“Well, I was possessed by the Monster. Endless loop of parties at Brakebills, to keep me happy and content. And then Bambi hit me with an axe.”

Repressed things are repressed for a reason, after all. No need to air them in this forum, of all places, whatever his mind had been doing in Quentin’s dream.

“You’re welcome,” Margo says, and Eliot kisses the top of her head.

“Then, the bonfire,” he resumes, folding the paper up with one hand and tucking it in his pocket.

“So, all our stories essentially end with Q being dead,” Julia says. “And you, the other you, I mean,” she gestures at the other Penny, “leading him into the Underworld is chronologically the last thing.”

“I led him to a door,” he says again. “But, like I said, it was weird. I was more aware that something was wrong, when I was your guys’ Penny. It was some serious déjà vu. I think I led him to the exact same door last time we did the spell, too, and then we all woke up here.”

The first time they did the dream-sharing spell, they had barely remembered any part of it after the initial confused moments. Hence, the notebooks this time, to write it all down while they remembered, so they could piece it together afterward.

They’ve just been trying to communicate with Quentin in a dream, the way he had spoken to Ora, in order to figure out if there’s a way he can escape, or facilitate their rescue of him. It seems, however, that they’ve stumbled upon something far more convoluted and sinister.

“How come it ends like that?” Margo asks. “Even if it is just a dream, Quentin’s dead, and what, none of us fucking think about trying to get him back from the Underworld? We don’t even talk about it, we just sing a song and move on?”

“Because that’s the point,” Alice says. “It’s a dream loop. A maze. That’s what’s keeping him trapped.” Everyone looks at her. She stares back, like she’s waiting for them to understand, then sighs and resigns herself to explanations. It must be hard sometimes, Eliot thinks, being Alice Quinn, always a few leagues ahead. “Think about it. We’re doing a spell to get into Q’s dream. He’s in Blackspire, as far as we know, and he’s dreaming about a complex and involved quest that ends in his sacrifice, with magic restored to the world, and all his friends sad about it, but ultimately moving on. Isn’t that what already happened, or what he thought would happen when he offered to stay in Blackspire in the first place?”

Eliot swallows, throat suddenly dry. He remembers Quentin standing in this room, telling them all that he would stay in Blackspire, as the new jailer. That the quest demanded sacrifice.

“So you’re saying, he’s just living out the same dream again and again and thinks it’s reality?” Josh asks.

“It would make sense,” Julia considers. “Callypso told you guys that Ora, the original jailer, the knight’s daughter, could leave whenever she wanted to. But she never wanted to, until Q offered to take her place. Why was that?”

“Because she had a ‘sacred task.’” Margo huffs a charming little snort-sigh of exasperation. “She was the noble questing type. She had to stay, to protect the world from the Monster.”

“But Bambi,” Eliot says, thinking about it, “there was no monster. We brought the gun, but we never shot anything. That was just in Q’s dream.”

“And there was no Ora,” Julia adds. “Right? There was no one in the castle at all. That’s why you had to use our set of keys to get in, and I had to make another set to get the Wellspring open.”

“Wait,” Eliot protests. “If there was no Ora, then who the fuck was Q talking to, when he made the deal to stay in the castle? She had to have existed at some point.”

“That fucking bitch,” Margo exhales. “‘Bait.’”

“What?” Eliot asks, but Josh’s eyes are lighting up in recognition.

“When Margo, Quentin, and I went to talk to Callypso, she went on about how the entire quest was basically a way to bait a trap. The whole tale of the seven keys. The knight’s daughter sets off to save her father, but her father was acting as bait, so that she would become the new jailer in the castle. Steadfast jailers, lured in by a quest. Except this time around…”

“She was the bait, and Q was lured in,” Margo finishes. “He thought he was saving her, by taking over her task, but there is no task at all, no monsters to guard. Motherfuckers.”

Josh scrunches up his face in confusion. “But what I don’t get is, if there’s no monsters in the castle, then why go through this rigmarole at all? I thought the whole idea was that someone would stand guard over these vaguely monstrous mistakes the gods had made, prevent them from getting out and destroying the world?”

“It could be that there’s a monster we just couldn’t see,” Kady offers, but Julia’s shaking her head, eyes wide.

“It’s a punishment,” Julia says. “It’s a trick. The cruelty of the old gods. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

“I still don’t see it,” Eliot says.

“Look, in the myth, Prometheus steals fire from the gods to give to humanity, and they punish him for it.”

“Yeah, he’s the one who gets his liver eaten with fava beans and a nice Chianti, even I know that,” Eliot says.

“But they also punished mankind, with Pandora, a so-called _gift_. A woman so beautiful and graceful that no man could resist, but then she opened a box and let evil into the previously innocent world of men.”

“The people who come up with myths are all sexist fucks,” Margo comments, as an aside.

“Agreed,” Julia says, “but here’s the thing. We know that Prometheus didn’t really steal fire, he stole _magic_ to give to humans. And the gods punished him, but what if they’re punishing us, too? Anyone who dares to undertake the quest for magic, and accept his gift?”

“Oh. I see. It’s the castle,” Alice says, piping up again at last. “Anyone who completes the quest has to go through Blackspire. But maybe Blackspire _is_ the monster, or it’s cursed. It lures people in who believe in the grand quest, but then they get trapped there, in a dream of… a grand quest. They think they’re saving the world from monsters, making a noble sacrifice to get magic back, but in fact…”

“They’re not the jailers,” Kady realizes. “They’re the ones in jail.”

“So Q’s trapped in a dream prison, and doesn’t realize he could just wake up and walk the fuck out?” Eliot summarizes.

“And we can’t get back in, because no more keys,” Josh adds.

There’s a long silence, before Margo breaks it with the only appropriate response. “Well, fuck. What the fuck do we do now?”

* * *

After much discussion, everyone reluctantly agrees to the other Penny’s suggestion that he try to travel into the castle alone for a few seconds, just to get a glimpse of what’s really going on.

Only his body doesn’t go anywhere. He crumples to the ground in a heap. “Penny!” exclaims Julia, and, interestingly, Kady, running forward to catch him.

He comes to, groaning. “I tried to travel in physically, but whatever the curse is, it protects the castle from entry. It forced me into an astral projection, into the dream again.”

Kady’s backed away; Julia and Josh help Penny into a chair, give him a glass of water. He turns to Alice. “You’re right, though. It’s a dream loop. I found myself back in Penny-40’s spirit, or body, or whatever, watching Quentin go through the door in the Underworld. And then, next thing I knew, I was in my own body, watching the door of Blackspire open because Ora let us in.”

Alice is nodding, unsurprised. And surprisingly unconcerned, Eliot thinks, with a flash of anger. “That must be where the loop begins and ends,” she says. “The door opening: one door turns into another.”

Endless repetitions of a thankless task. The slow, creeping realization that a split second decision, to undertake this task, was actually you signing your entire life over to it. Literally dying for the cause, and then coming back to yourself, and understanding that you still weren’t free of it, the demands and sacrifices of the quest, still ongoing. Haven’t they been there before?

But they’d been together, then. It hadn’t felt like a curse, when he had Quentin by his side.

“I refer you back to my question,” Margo says. “What the fuck are we going to do now?”

“We can’t leave him there alone,” Eliot says, and his voice sounds strange. Choked. It makes Margo look at him sideways, but no one else seems to notice.

“He can leave whenever he wants. That’s what Callypso said,” Alice says, still infuriatingly calm. “He doesn’t want to. How are we supposed to force him out of a dream that’s basically tailor-made for him, his personality and his vulnerabilities?”

“Maybe we need to _use_ the dream world,” Julia suggests. “I know the curse probably limits how much we can change things, but there are spells you can use to manipulate a dream.” Right. She’d know, having trapped Quentin in a nightmare once before. “What if we can alter the architecture of the maze, so to speak, just enough? Rewrite the narrative of the dream so that he realizes he’s free to escape?”

“Rewrite it into what?” Margo asks. “Even if we could plagiarize _Inception_ with a spell, Quinn is right. Q’s living out his wet dream already: a quest for magic, a heroic journey, a big sacrifice. What does he want more?”

That’s the thing, though. As much as Quentin believes in the quest, and will never quit trying, no matter the cost, there _is_ something he cares about more. Wasn’t that what the Mosaic was all about?

“Uh. I have a really bad idea, courtesy of Leonardo DiCaprio,” Eliot starts. Everyone looks at him. “Well. Q was lured in by a quest, right? A sense of purpose, a hero’s sacrifice, archetypes, whatever. You all know I didn’t pass AP lit. But what’s better than a quest where you sacrifice yourself to save the world?”

Oddly enough, it’s Josh who gets it first. He snaps his fingers. Eliot’s still not down with him dream-romancing Margo, of course, but he does seem to be proving his worth today. “A quest where you save the world, but also get the girl and the happily ever after, of course.”

“Motherfucking Leo,” Margo breathes. “‘We all long for catharsis.’ A happy ending beats a sad one, every time.”

“Exactly,” Eliot says. “So what if we incept him with a quest that has a happy ending? More importantly, one with a helpful arrow at the end, pointing at the real door to the castle?”

“That might work,” Julia says, sounding excited. “Because, think about it. The castle is cursed. We’re always going to be working against that, whatever magic we do. But the cursed dream _has_ to be malleable, by definition. It has to be able to change itself to fit the person it’s trapping; otherwise, it wouldn’t work. It’s like Alice and Margo were saying: for Q, a big quest and a sacrifice make enough sense to his mind that he doesn’t question it. But that wouldn’t work as well for, say, Margo.”

“Yeah, because it’s bullshit,” Margo agrees.

“So the curse probably prevents us from changing the dream drastically. But if we replace this random, sprawling quest dream of Quentin’s with _another quest_, maybe the castle would accept the change in plot, because it still retains the basic architecture of the dream that’s keeping him trapped. And if we’re subtle enough, maybe we could drop enough clues for him to make his way out.”

“Uh, did anyone here actually understand _Inception_, in detail? Because this sounds like some really difficult spellwork otherwise,” Josh says.

“Another problem,” Kady adds. “Even if we write a plot or whatever to direct the dream, Quentin’s mind is casting the parts. And none of us can remember anything outside the dream when we’re in it, right? So how do we keep him on track and not just get sucked in again ourselves? It’s not like what you and Marina did, Julia. The castle itself, the curse, is controlling the dream world in the end. So you can’t just walk in and be aware and lead him to the door. How do we influence events within the dream if we can’t even remember who we are or why we’re there?”

“That’s not entirely true,” the other Penny says. Kady doesn’t look at him, but stops talking. “I could—

“We’re not all psychic, though,” Margo interrupts.

“I don’t think that’s it. Because when I was playing myself, like myself from my own timeline, I couldn’t remember anything either. It was only when his mind also cast me as the _other_ Penny, your Penny,” he nods at Kady, greatly daring, Eliot thinks, “or this random DJ at some point, that I knew something wasn’t right.”

“That could still just be because you’re psychic, and more sensitive to this kind of shit,” Eliot says, but Margo looks thoughtful.

“He might be on to something. When I was Janet? I think? When Fogg and the Library took our memories, in the dream, I felt like something wasn’t right, too.”

Kady exhales. “You’re right,” she admits. “I was a detective, and I knew something was wrong, I was investigating it.”

Eliot shrugs. “I don’t remember having a false identity,” he says. “I was just possessed by the Monster, so whatever it was, I didn’t have it for long.”

“So, if we’re playing ourselves in the dream, it’s too close to reality,” Julia surmises. “Our minds get sucked into the curse, and we believe that what’s happening is real. But if we’re playing someone else, it’s foreign enough to our minds that we could potentially retain some sense of who we really are, and what we’re trying to do.”

“So we write ourselves fictional roles,” Margo says. She must really be getting into it, because she doesn’t normally let her nerd side come out this obviously. “Archetypal figures of a quest, so the curse won’t question it, but similar enough to ourselves that Quentin’s mind will be sure to cast us in the correct parts.”

“The closer the characters are to how _you_ really are, the harder it is to hold on to your real identity,” Penny says, and well, he’s the Psychic, so he would know, Eliot supposes. “Especially without Psychic training, I think you’d only be able to pull off the dual consciousness for a few minutes before the curse pulls you in, and you forget why you’re really there. There are a few shielding tricks I could do, which might buy you some time, but this curse pulled _me_ in, and I’m a lot better at this than any of you.”

“There are seven of us, though,” Kady says. She glares at him. “We could take turns. Make it work somehow. We have to try, at least.” No one else says anything for a few seconds.

Julia breaks the silence. “Right. So, archetypal figures. Starting at the end, there’s the beloved, obviously. The object of the romantic quest, representing the promise of a new life together. That’s what gets Q out of this.”

Everyone turns to Alice.

“This is why I didn’t want magic back,” she says, sounding bitter. Eliot recalls, suddenly, that Quentin’s dream had guessed he planned to shoot the Monster, even though Quentin hadn’t actually known that Eliot had brought the gun with him at all. Maybe the castle’s curse is reflecting the worst possible outcome to that plan, but the point is that Quentin knows him, and Margo. And he knows Alice, too. So how likely was it that Alice had actually had a plan to destroy the keys and do away with magic, just like she had in the dream?

“Magic ruins everything,” she goes on. “And now Quentin is—fine. Fine. I’ll help. I’ll research how to modify the dream architecture, and I’ll be a part of this spell if we can figure out how to do it. I’ll play whatever part you need me to play. And then, I’m done.”

“Great,” Josh says, awkwardly bright. “Alice is on the playbill. Who’s next?”

“It really changes based on the story,” Julia says. Next to Quentin, she’s probably their resident expert on the subject of quests. “But there are typically various figures who help or harm or test the hero in the course of their journey. The best thing to do would be to pick a tale to model our quest on, and modify the characters in it to fit ourselves. We can probably get away with some flexibility there. But I’m thinking two roles are non-negotiable for our purposes: we need the beloved to give us the happily ever after,” she nods at Alice, “and we need a guide.”

“A guide?” Eliot asks.

“Someone he trusts, who helps him set off on the quest,” Julia explains. “Sometimes, they’re just there at the start. Sometimes, they go a little further with the hero, but die in the middle, to create conflict, despair, and motivation. Sometimes, they’ll survive, but the hero goes on to surpass their teacher. They can be there solely as a supporting figure, or to provide a contrast in some way, to reveal more of the hero’s character. Regardless, it’s the most important relationship besides the romance.”

“You’re the obvious candidate,” Eliot points out, but Julia shakes her head.

“It’s more of a mentor figure than a childhood friend.”

“Like Gandalf?” Kady asks.

“Fogg?” Josh throws out.

Everyone thinks about that suggestion for a moment.

“Eliot,” Alice says.

“What?”

“It’s you. Of all of us, you’re the one he—”

“You _were_ his guide, first day at Brakebills,” Margo considers. “And you took him under your wing.”

“Our wing,” Eliot corrects. “Collective.”

She looks at him pointedly. “We both know that I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been—”

Eliot clears his throat. “Yes, well. No need to rehash all that.” His harmless yet embarrassing little crush on the cute first-year nerd is not the topic of interest for this discussion. “So what, I give him condoms and a shove in Alice’s direction, and then die heroically, halfway through?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Julia says. She’s lost in thought, staring into space. “We need you to survive. I think you’re going to be the key to all of this. Or, well. We’re going to be the keys. You’re going to be the lock.”

“Oh, good,” Eliot says, exchanging a “what the fuck?” look with Margo. “Now, if you could explain what you’re talking about…”

Julia looks up at him. “The trouble is, the guide is a fairly prominent figure. It requires a lot of screen time. According to Penny, that means that the chance you’ll be able to hold on to your sense of self throughout the quest is slim to none. I’m thinking everyone else can just make brief appearances along the way, so we’ll remember who we really are for the short period of time we’re in the dream. But you’d need to guide Quentin out of the maze without realizing that’s what you were doing, because you’d be in character practically the whole time.”

“I suppose I am a character actor,” Eliot says, mostly to say something. He’s not entirely sure he understands what Julia’s talking about.

But maybe she doesn’t fully understand it yet, either, because she says, “I need to think more about this. We need to storyboard this very carefully if it’s going to work. Alice, if you can handle researching how to influence the structure of the dream…”

Alice takes a breath. She looks troubled, but answers readily. “Yes. It’d be helpful if—maybe Josh and Margo can help me. Since they’re the ones who talked to Callypso, and she’s the architect who designed Blackspire. The physical form of the castle could have a lot to do with the architecture of the dream curse, if they’re so intimately linked.”

This really is like _Inception_, Eliot thinks, architects and all.

“Great,” Margo says, spectacularly unenthused, and the three of them retreat to the kitchen to talk more.

“I’ll help you,” the other Penny offers, looking at Julia. “If you’re designing the characters and the quest, having a Psychic might be useful. I can try to shield each of you from the curse while you’re in the spell, too.”

“I’ll help you too, if you could use a normal person just to bounce ideas off of.” Kady rolls her eyes and looks like she hates her life as she speaks. Eliot appreciates that in a person.

Julia smiles at them both, and the second awkward threesome goes off together.

“I’ll just stay here, then,” Eliot says, to the empty room. “Rest my voice. Get into character.”

He closes his eyes, and tries not to think about Quentin, ill-fitting blazer, mouth open, stunned and speechless, the first time Eliot had tried to play his wise and worldly guide to Brakebills and magic. The way that for all that Eliot had been leaning hard into this image of someone brilliant and sharp-edged and untouchably above it all, his heart had suffered an involuntary pang at the sight of this particular boy, for no particular reason whatsoever. And then, deceptively soft little Quentin Coldwater had proceeded to cut him open with no effort at all, almost before brilliant, sharp, untouchable Eliot even realized his armor was down and he was being touched.

Look how well that had turned out.

Well, what do they say about rehearsal and repetition?

“Practice makes perfect,” Eliot says, and tries to believe it.

* * *

Eliot finds himself flitting between the two groups for a while and sharing progress reports, but eventually they all come together again, now transplanted to their own castle in Fillory rather than the Cottage.

“Fuck me, I’m Juno the architect, and I’m fucking brilliant,” Margo says, when she announces that they need to change locations. That she’s been eager to return to Whitespire and her—their?—kingdom goes unspoken, but it seems there’s more than that at work here.

“We do like Ellen Page,” Eliot says, kissing her forehead by way of encouragement. “Tell me more.”

Margo_ is _brilliant, but Eliot’s known that from the moment he met her. The more important thing is that her idea here might be the key to everything.

Whitespire, she explains once they’ve reassembled in the castle, was modeled on Callypso’s architectural design for Blackspire. In fact, Ember and Umber were big fat copycats who literally flipped the world over and built a _mirror image_ of the castle the group is now trying to break into, which in magical terms, creates a very convenient opening for them.

“We think that Blackspire _is_ the curse,” Alice says. “The architecture of the castle is literally and metaphysically the same thing as the architecture of the dream that Q is trapped in. So if we use the layout of _Whitespire_ for our own dream spell, we should be able to overlay it perfectly, reflect our mirror image on to the curse, and—”

“Co-opt Q’s dream,” Eliot finishes.

“Exactly,” Alice replies. “I’ve got the math basically worked out. We just need to insert the details of the dream storyline into the spellwork, now,” she says, turning to Julia.

“I’ve been thinking it through,” Julia says, “and the main thing is, we need something episodic. One or two of us in each episode, so that no one has to spend too much time in the dream, and risk losing their sense of self. Alice has to star in the grand finale, and the rest of us are there as signposts along the way, to make sure things are on track for Q to make it to her. And now I’m thinking we use rooms of Whitespire to mark out the separate episodes. Little spell bubbles, one at a time. Crossing over the threshold means you’re entering the next one.”

“Stories-within-a-story,” Josh mutters.

As she’s been talking, Julia’s been handing out copies of…

“Seriously?” Margo asks. “‘The Snow Queen’? Doesn’t that give anyone else some kind of creepy Brakebills South vibes?”

“Well, South _is_ where these two got together,” Eliot points out, and Alice sighs loudly, irritated, for whatever reason. For his part, Eliot tries not to think about standing with—with Mike, and seeing Quentin and Alice return together, and realizing… He flashes a charming smile. “Apropos, no?”

“It’s the best I could come up with,” Julia says. “There are lots of roles for us all to take on, and it’s not romantic, per se, but the protagonist sets off to save the person she loves most, who’s being held captive in a palace. And then they make it out together, because of her courage and her love. So, close enough.”

“It’s pretty damn good,” Kady says, like she’s daring anyone to disagree.

“So, you each have the relevant parts highlighted in your copies,” Julia continues.

“Fuck me. A motherfucking princess? Are you kidding me with this shit?” Margo complains.

“Listen, I’m playing not one, but two wise women,” the other Penny says, and it’s the closest he’s come to sounding like _their_ Penny, like ever, “so stow your fucking shit.”

“Uh, question,” Eliot says, as he skims the first few pages of the story.

“There’s no guide in the original,” Julia answers, before he asks. “I know. It’s more of a religious, guided by innocence and the love of God in your heart thing.”

“I know I’m talented, but ‘innocence and love of God’ is not a part I’m going to be able to pull off.”

“I know, but it’s okay. Or it should be. As much as any of this will be okay. Because Q’s mind is mediating all of it. We’re giving him the outline of the dream, but he’s going to populate it with his subconscious. So he’ll cast us the way he thinks about us, in some sense.”

“Well, that’ll be interesting to see,” Eliot says carefully. Interesting, and not at all concerning or anxiety provoking in any way.

“So, we’re just sticking you into a version of the second scene, when she goes to the river to find out if her friend is still alive, and sets off on the quest to get him back. And we’re hoping that Q will be thinking about quests, and meeting you for the first time…”

“And see me as a worldly wise figure and mentor, I get it.”

“But Eliot,” Julia says, and she sounds even more serious than before, pulling him aside. “What I was saying before. You’re going to be going on the quest _with_ Q, which means—”

“I’ll be in character the whole time,” he recites. “You said, I won’t be able to remember who I really am, or why I’m there.”

“We’ll help you,” Julia replies. “Whenever you cross the threshold and meet one of us, we’ll remind you why you’re really there, and you can update us on how things are going, since obviously, both Q’s mind and the curse itself are going to fuck with the dream’s outline and change things. Not to mention that _you’ll _be acting as kind of a free agent, since you won’t know what’s going on. But when you see us, you’ll tell us what’s actually happened, and we’ll do our best to keep pointing you and Q in the right direction.”

“Okay, but how are you going to remind me who I am, exactly?”

Julia smiles. “Don’t laugh, but it’s another _Inception_ steal. You know in the movie, how when people have secrets, they manifest in dreams as a safe, or a bank vault, or something with a lock?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Well, we’re going to give you something that locks, where your mind should hide your true identity and purpose, because obviously that’s a secret you want to keep safe from Blackspire and the curse.”

Well, yes, but the question is, what else is Eliot’s mind going to try to hide in there? He is not, precisely, a person without any secrets at all.

“Okay,” he says uneasily. “And then, you’ll have the key, all of you?”

“It’ll be a catchphrase,” Julia says. “Whenever anyone speaks it to you, you should remember everything, just for that moment.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not going to tell you. It’s too dangerous, in case you trigger it by accident. I’m worried that if any of us are ourselves for too long, and aware that we’re actively trying to break the curse, it’ll trigger the curse’s defense mechanisms, and destabilize our spellwork.”

“We’ll get sucked into the dream, you mean, and forget who we are.”

“Or get kicked out completely,” she says. “Or the dream will reset into its original form, the loop that ends with Q’s sacrifice. I don’t know. But if an actual Psychic-Traveler couldn’t hold on to his own sense of self for that long, I don’t think we should risk Blackspire figuring out what we’re up to. The dream curse is too powerful. Our best chance is to try to slip under its radar. Which means we can only _wake you up_ in small doses.”

At that point, Alice comes over to hash out some of the details of the spellwork with Julia, and Margo volunteers to show them the hallway in the castle that is made up of a procession of adjoining rooms, ideal for them to set up their spell.

Eliot settles down to read the rest of the story. It’s not bad, he decides. A bit religious for his tastes, but it’s… sweet. He can see why Julia looked at the little girl in this story, all courage and heart, her goodness, the way she tries, and how that draws people into her quest, and chose it for Quentin.

Quentin deserves the happy ending, he thinks. Maybe Eliot doesn’t even have a real role in the actual story, but he’s going to play his hastily ad-libbed part to the best of his ability, and get Quentin where he needs to go.

Speaking of the happy ending…

“Oh,” Eliot says. He’s wandered on to one of the balconies to smoke, but Alice is already there, apparently back from Margo’s tour.

“You don’t have to go,” she says, sounding annoyed enough that he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to stay.

Still. “Are you all right?” he asks.

She scoffs. “Do you even care?”

“Given that we’re about to embark on some dangerous and experimental magic to save Quentin’s life, I do care, if whatever’s fucking you up might fuck up our plan,” he responds.

“Well, luckily for you, nothing has ever fucked up my ability to do _magic_,” she sneers. “My spellwork is perfect, so don’t worry about that.”

Eliot bites down on his kneejerk, sarcastic response. “Alice,” he says. “Seriously. I’m not trying to judge you, or say that you’re not pulling your weight, because obviously, you’ve been instrumental in all this. But. I really don’t get why you’re so angry about it, and I’m worried, because, well, everyone else, they’re just signposts along the way. You and I have to bring it home. And by it, I mean him.”

“If he wants to come,” Alice says, closing her eyes. “And it’s easy for you. You don’t have to, I don’t know, dress yourself up as some image of his ideal woman, and lure him in. How am I any better than Ora, or the curse? _Bait_.”

“How can you say that?” Eliot asks incredulously. “How can you not know how important you are to him? You two… you’re his happy ending, Alice. In the fairytale parlance, I’d go so far as to say you’re his _true love_.”

She blinks her eyes open again, meets his gaze with a frustrated, blazing look. “Am I? We were together for a few weeks, Eliot! And everything after that… he wanted to get me back, so badly, but he was holding on to someone I’m not sure exists anymore, if she ever did. And now, it’s been awkward between us, for months. I don’t know if he still—or if I even want him to.”

There’s a pause while Eliot tries to find an adequate response to that.

“You’re saying, because you’re not sure you want to date him, you don’t want him to come back to this plane of _existence_?” Of all the selfish people in the world, Alice Quinn takes the fucking cake, he thinks, at the same time uncomfortably aware that he’s probably being unfair, for reasons he doesn’t want to acknowledge.

“Of course I want him to come back! But I don’t want him to do it under false pretenses, because he thinks he and I are going to go back to the way things were, because I’m not sure we can.”

“Who the actual fuck cares what he thinks will happen?” Jesus fucking Christ, save him from these fucking idealistic naïfs. “We get him home first. Lie, cheat, steal, kill, whatever. Get him home, and then you can let him down easy, if that’s what you want.”

“You can’t control your subconscious, Eliot!” Alice exclaims. “And a dream, a cursed dream, at that, is the sort of thing in which that matters. It’s Quentin’s dream, and we’re giving him the plot, but the moment any of us enter that world, we open ourselves to it too, don’t you see? I don’t know what’ll come out, when I’m in the dream. Even if I try to pretend… who knows how it’ll manifest, this uncertainty I’m feeling? I might not be able to—don’t you get it? How could I live with myself if—you guys are leaving it all on me, and it might not work, _if I don’t love him enough_.”

There’s a ringing silence.

Eliot takes another calming breath. Lets go of the anger, or at least pushes it down deep again. This is a problem he can deal with.

“Alice. Forget about enough. Forget about after. You love Q, don’t you? You want him to come home?”

“Yes, of course,” she repeats, tears in her eyes. She sounds wretched and guilty.

“Focus on that. If it all goes to plan, you’ll only need a few minutes. With Penny’s shielding work, you should be able to hold on to your consciousness for that long without getting sucked into the dream. Your subconscious shouldn’t even come into play if you’re the one in control. You convince him to come home, and then you get out before whatever uncertainty you’re feeling fucks it all up.”

Alice sighs. She rests her hands on the balustrade, clutching tightly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just. Nervous, I guess.”

“A little stage fright is perfectly normal,” Eliot says, magnanimous, and he doesn’t embrace her, exactly, but he puts a hand on her shoulder and leaves it there, and she doesn’t protest.

She looks up at him. “What about you, though?”

“Me? I’m a veteran of the stage,” he answers glibly.

“No, I mean. Your subconscious. You’re at the most risk, of all of us, because you won’t be _Eliot_, there. You’ll be in character, which means that all the things under the surface, your thoughts and feelings, your fears and doubts, they might manifest in strange ways in the dream, you know? You won’t be conscious enough to control them the way the rest of us will.”

Good thing Julia’s fashioning him a lockbox for all that, after all, isn’t it? If there’s anything Eliot knows how to do, even in his sleep, it’s instinctive repression.

“Ah, you know me,” he says, waving his cigarette-holding hand, admiring the plume of smoke against the dark Fillorian sky. “All surface, all the way down. There’s really nothing much to see beneath.”

* * *

**ii. A Boy and Another Boy**

When Quentin finally breaks through the trees and sees the crystalline waters of Chatwin’s Torrent, he breathes out a sigh of relief. Ever since he opened the door of the centaurs’ sanctuary and stepped on to the path this morning, the air under the canopy of the trees has felt uncomfortably close, and the forest eerily quiet. Creatures and humans alike have fled in the wake of the Beast’s destruction, and the land feels as desolate as he himself does.

This place, perhaps by virtue of its very nature, feels brighter.

Quentin stumbles his way down the uncut path, and it’s not until he reaches the bank that he realizes that someone else is already there. There’s a man in the water, floating, very still. His eyes are closed. Quentin waits, not wanting to interrupt whatever healing is happening.

He waits a long while, to no avail, and then a horrifying thought strikes him. Dead bodies float, too.

“Hey!” he tries to shout, but it comes out strangled, like when you try to scream in a nightmare and can’t find your voice. Heart pounding, he wades out into the water, half-swimming as it gets deeper, until he reaches the man and grabs his shoulders.

They both startle spectacularly — the man presumably at the interruption, and Quentin at the shock of realizing that he’s alive after all — and there’s a lot of chaotic splashing and spluttering before they end up facing each other, treading water.

“What,” says the man, “the fuck.” And then, looking down at Quentin’s hand on his shoulder: “Don’t—_touch _me!” This last comes out as a gasp, and he shoves Quentin away hard, pulling his gloved hands back immediately. One lands briefly on his chest, and then he sighs in apparent relief. 

“Okay, fine,” Quentin says, now a few feet from him. “Sorry, I was just trying to—I saw you floating there, not moving, and I thought—”

“What, that I was dead?”

“Well, yeah.”

The man stares at him for a second and then laughs sharply. “No. Not yet.” And he makes his way to the bank again, not bothering to look back. Quentin follows, awkwardly. Being drenched has not helped the fit of his horrible clothing, he thinks, wringing out what he can before wondering if he should be saving all this healing water instead of letting it drip away.

The stranger, on the other hand, seems unconcerned with both the state of his clothes and the potential preciousness of the commodity he’s soaked in. He sits down and gazes into the water distantly, like some dark-haired, moody Narcissus.

Quentin should probably collect the bottles of water he came here for, and maybe soak his blistered feet before heading out again, and leave this guy to his contemplation, but…

“Hey,” he says again.

“Oh,” the man says, looking up to where Quentin is standing beside him. “Sorry, did you want privacy to… I can go.” He stands up slowly, unfolding long limbs with obnoxious grace.

“No, I just wanted to, uh, apologize, again, I guess.” Not that Quentin thinks his actions were completely inexplicable, but he’s the sort of person who apologizes anyway, he supposes. “So, uh, I’m sorry? For touching you?”

The man stares at him like he’s never seen another person string together words this incoherently before. Which, maybe he hasn’t, because Quentin is sort of special in this regard, if not in any others.

But then, he sighs. “Listen. I get that you meant well. It’s just, I’m cursed,” he says flatly, holding up his hands. He’s wearing dark gloves that extend up past his elbows, and a black long sleeved tunic with a high collar, still soaked through, plastered over them. Somehow, he makes the drenched, demurely covered get-up seem both attractively suggestive and rakishly elegant. “Touch me at your peril and all that. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but it seems a bit ungrateful to inflict that on someone who was trying, however foolishly, to save my life.”

“Hey!” Quentin protests. “How was I supposed to know that you were _cursed_?”

“You weren’t to know that. But hero complex much? Why would you assume—are there many recorded instances of anyone _drowning_ in Chatwin’s Torrent, in the sanctified waters of _healing_? What would that even look like?”

That’s a fair point, and not a question Quentin has ever considered, actually.

“I don’t know,” he says. “If the water was the cause of the injury, wouldn’t it just heal whatever damage it did as it went along?”

It’s only after Quentin says it that he realizes that the stranger probably meant his question rhetorically. But anyway, after yet another moment of staring at him oddly, the man actually takes his inquiry seriously.

“Or is damage caused by the water itself the one thing it can’t heal? That would be suitably _poetic_, wouldn’t it?” He forms the adjective like it’s a profanity. Then, he laughs again, and there’s something surprised in it. “Listen to me, sounding like I care. Sure sign that I’m in need of a different type of watering hole. So, gallant stranger, farewell. I wish you the best of luck on your quest.”

“How do you know I’m going on a quest?”

The man just looks at Quentin, a long, sweeping slide of his gaze, head to toe, and then back up again to meet his eyes. “Someone like you has always got a quest.” 

“Wait,” Quentin says. “Just. Did it work?”

“Hmm?”

“The waters. Did they heal you?”

“Not a scratch on me,” he says, but it’s all bitterness.

“No. I mean. Your curse.” Seeing his face, Quentin hurries to add, “I don’t mean to pry, I’m sorry. It’s just that, you’re right. I’m setting out on a quest. And at the end of it, I have to face a Beast, the one who’s drained the land of all magic, and taken it for himself. Everything except for this spring. The centaurs told me that if I came here, I would find what I needed, to break the curse and defeat the Beast. But, do the waters still have magic? And do they work against curses?”

The man considers him for a few seconds. “The magic of the spring is self-sustaining,” he says finally. “Your Beast can’t have depleted it, not while there’s anyone alive to seek out its healing powers.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well,” the man says, and pauses pointedly.

“Quentin,” Quentin supplies.

“Well, _Quentin_, haven’t you ever heard that magic comes from pain?”

Quentin thinks he has heard that, actually, though he’s hard pressed to recall where, right now. “So?”

“So, as long as people are in pain, they’ll seek out Chatwin’s Torrent. They offer up their pain, and the spring drinks it up, turns it into healing magic. Hence, self-sustaining. It’s really quite clever, if you think about it. Or a pointless cycle, representative of the endless pain and meaninglessness of life. You choose.”

He raises an eyebrow, mocking little smile on his face, and turns to go again.

“Wait!” Quentin calls out again.

“What?”

“You didn’t tell me your name,” Quentin says uncertainly. It’s not what he meant to say, but it’s what comes out.

“And why would I do that?”

Well, that’s a good question, too. Quentin doesn’t even know why he’s still trying to talk to this guy, who has probably been about as helpful as he’s going to be, and clearly wants to leave. But something about him throws Quentin off balance, makes him feel a little shaken, but in a good way. The way he felt opening the door and setting off on this quest, however dire the circumstances, at least bolstered by the sense that he was doing something worth doing.

And for all that he keeps trying to leave, the man hasn’t left, yet. There is that. He’s watching Quentin, waiting for an answer, almost like he wants Quentin to say something worth waiting for.

“At least tell me about the curse,” is what Quentin manages.

The man laughs. “You truly don’t quit, do you?” he asks, but fortunately, it sounds more amused than offended. “I can’t be of much assistance, though, I’m afraid. My curse hurts _other people_, so I’m not sure how well the waters heal curse-inflicted injuries. Usually, the victims don’t want to share things with me, afterward, if they’re still alive.” He rolls his eyes again, deceptively casual.

“Oh. Okay. Um. I’m sorry.” That went well. Quentin waits for him to leave.

Instead, however, the man hesitates, touching the collar of his tunic absently, as though feeling for something under it. He says, “As for the curse, I still have it. I’m sure of that much.”

“Sorry,” Quentin repeats.

“You didn’t curse me,” the man says, and shrugs. They stand in silence for a moment longer, before he heaves a greatly exaggerated sigh, and sits back down, still unfairly graceful, patting the spot in front of him. “Well, come on then. Tell me all about the curse _you’re_ trying to break. I know you want to.”

“Really?” Quentin asks, but he’s already sitting down too.

“I’m not doing anything else, I suppose. So?”

“So, I loved a girl,” Quentin begins.

“Ah, a tale as old as time,” the stranger replies.

“Before, I was—I had this thing, where I felt like nothing was ever going to be okay, that nothing in my life had a purpose. But then I met her, and… it wasn’t all joy, for my spirits are often low, and she had lost her brother, and grieved him. But it was like the compass of my life worked again. See, we set off on a long journey to find her brother, and though we only found his grave, along the way, we found each other. And I think I was happy.”

Quentin says “I think” even though he knows it to be true, because he can’t feel it anymore. Whatever happiness he had then is so remote from him now that it fails to signify as fact in his mind. Despair has a way of consuming him. He knows it’s only been a matter of days and weeks, but he also feels certain he’s never known anything else besides this unspeakable desolation.

“Romantic.”

“But then we returned to our home, and discovered that a horrible Beast had taken over lands far and wide, and drained the world of its magic. How could we be content in hearth and home while this was going on?”

“Quite easily, if you had interesting enough activities to pass the time.”

Quentin rolls his own eyes at that, but continues his story. “We set off to fix it, for we had heard tell in our travels of the Wellspring, the source of all magic, the last great reservoir against the Beast, and thought to use it against him. My beloved… she was very skilled at magic.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t go well.”

“No,” he says, choking a little on the word, caught up in the memory. “No, we failed. The Beast was there waiting for us, and the last magic of the Wellspring was depleted. He injured me, and he took my love. She was enslaved by his curse, taken captive, and I had no power left to fight.”

Quentin looks down at the ground between them, then off to the left, at the rushing waters of the Torrent, and blinks away the moisture from his eyes. He doesn’t want to remember this part.

“Nigel.”

“What?”

“My name,” Nigel says. He’s a man of unexpected twists and turns, because all of a sudden, both his tone and his expression are soft and serious, nothing mocking at all. “And Quentin, I’m truly sorry.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“What happened then?” Nigel asks, and it’s nothing special, just a matter-of-fact question, but there’s something in the way he asks it that makes Quentin want to tell the truth.

Maybe it’s just that Quentin hasn’t talked to another human being since his beloved was lost to him. The centaurs, helpful as they were, had been so remote.

“I lay there, and thought I would die. I even wanted to.”

“The feeling is not unfamiliar to me,” Nigel admits, and he’s staring out into the waters in his turn, though he’s dry-eyed.

“But the centaurs found me, took me in, healed me. And they reminded me of this place, Chatwin’s Torrent. And I thought, there’s still magic in the world. The story’s not over yet. If there’s still a chance that I can defeat the Beast and save her, don’t I have to try?”

When he looks up, Nigel is smiling slightly, a wondering sort of expression in his eyes. “What?” Quentin asks.

“Nothing,” Nigel says, and tamps down on the little smile. Oddly, Quentin feels the loss of it somewhere in his chest. “So, where to? Once you’ve collected the healing waters of the spring?”

“Eventually, the Castle at the End of the World. That’s where he’s holding her. But I don’t know where it is. And I don’t know if I’m ready. I feel like I should load up on more magic, if I can find it, because how can I face the Beast again without it? But I don’t even know where to start.” He sighs, dejected. It’s not enough. He’s not strong enough to do this, no matter how he tries.

“Actually,” Nigel says, and then visibly hesitates. He seems to come to a decision, though, and continues, “You’ve already started. You already stepped out your door, right?”

“Right,” Quentin says, “for all the good it’s done me.”

“Ah, none of that. You’re here to bottle the magic of Chatwin’s Torrent, aren’t you? That’s something. More than what you had before, anyway. Besides which,” he adds, rising to his feet in one swift, lovely motion (how _does_ he do it?), “now you have me.”

“What?”

“And I, my friend, might know where you should go next. There’s a witch, they say, who has a flower garden that grows on magic. Secret streams of it, underground, that started at the Wellspring, but spread far and wide, which your Beast may not have touched.”

“The Drowned Garden,” Quentin says, clambering to his feet as well, and feeling his spirits lift as though with the movement, too. “The flowers that speak the stories you need to hear—of course, they might be able to tell me—but how do I find this witch?”

Nigel raises an eyebrow again. It’s much friendlier, this time. “Come on, follow me.”

Quentin laughs, disbelieving, and doesn’t move. “But wait. Nigel. The roads have grown dangerous, without magic. And I can’t pay you. Why would you…”

Nigel just casts him one more long, curious look. “Make sure they sing of me in the songs they write of your quest, hero,” he says, and it’s definitely mocking, but also terribly kind, and it makes Quentin smile honestly for the first time in weeks. “I’d like to be immortalized. That shall be payment enough.”

So Quentin fills the empty bottles the centaurs had given him with water from the spring and packs them away in his knapsack, and the two of them set off together.

“It’s a bit disappointing, though, isn’t it? That magic, this beautiful thing, comes from pain?” Quentin wonders aloud, as they make their way up the steep path that led him down to Chatwin’s Torrent. “I mean, I suppose you don’t have to take such a depressing view of it. Perhaps the fact that the things that hurt you also give you the power to heal is a sign that it’s not all miserable and meaningless, after all.”

Nigel huffs, but doesn’t deign to answer that.

“But anyway. Why can’t it run on, like, love, or something?” Quentin asks, hearing the plaintiveness in his own voice, and knowing he’s just giving his companion something else to tease him with.

But in fact, it makes Nigel stop and turn to him with something like pity.

“It does,” Nigel says. “Oh, my heroic friend, if this is a lesson you still haven’t learned, I’m sorry to be the one to impart it on to you. But such is my burden, as your wise mentor and guide.” He adopts an exaggeratedly didactic tone. “Pain is the sacrifice we make to the gods, and in return, they give us magic. But where do we get the pain?”

Quentin hesitates, unsure if he’s being rhetorical again. But Nigel says nothing, waiting for him to follow. Finally, Quentin asks, “What do you mean?”

“Consult your own heart. Can’t you see?” He takes a beat, lifts his chin, shrugs his shoulders as though the answer means nothing to him. “Love is the worst pain.”

* * *

**iii. The Drowned Garden**

“Can you feel it?” Quentin asks.

“What?” Nigel, who’s a few paces ahead, stops and turns back.

He doesn’t know why it strikes him so forcibly at this moment, but though the long, open road Nigel is leading him on is very different than the forest path that brought Quentin to Chatwin’s Torrent in the first place, it is, in its own way, as eerie and barren and disconcerting.

“There’s no magic,” Quentin says. He closes his eyes and listens to the silence, as though to remind himself what he’s there for.

The sun rises and sets, but no birds cross the sky. Crops wilt in the fields alongside the road, unattended. Fires have to be struck by hand. The villages they pass through are dark and isolated, people huddling in their own dwellings, conserving the heat and the light as the days grow darker and cooler.

It’s the lack of magic; there’s no other explanation for the unnatural bleakness of the world. Quentin has felt it since he was knocked to the ground in the confrontation with the Beast, stunned for a second or for hours, before he opened his eyes to see the form of his beloved in front of him, glowing with the magic she had absorbed, but devoid of any feeling. She’d vanished, and in her wake, he realized, magic had departed the world as well.

His spirits are often low, he had told Nigel, but at that moment, Quentin had felt truly dead and buried, suffocating underground, the lowest he’s ever been. Whether it was the loss of magic, or his own broken heart, he still can’t say.

Both are still in force, of course, but all the same, Quentin’s spirits have lifted themselves into some semblance of positivity over the past few days. Perhaps it’s as the centaurs had promised in those early hours, when Quentin was most uninterested in recuperating from his injuries: healing the body was the first step toward healing the mind. Or perhaps it’s simply that the quest has given him back a sense of purpose, to save the girl he loves and restore magic to the world, to boot.

“Yes,” Nigel says, after a comically long pause. “We’ve established that. All the more reason to get a move on, hero. This horrible path is destroying the tread of my boots, and then I won’t be able to make the hike up to lead you to the witch’s cottage, and then where would your quest be?”

Well, and then there’s Nigel. Quentin opens his eyes and ceases his contemplation of the desolate emptiness of the world, smiling despite himself at Nigel’s mock impatience and bone-dry tone.

Nigel, for all his mercurial moods and strange quirks, is a gift of a companion, one that Quentin finds himself immeasurably grateful for, even when he’s being condescending, irritating, or both. He always seems to recognize when Quentin is overthinking things, and pulls him out of it with a quip or a metaphorical shove. Or, when conversation fails them, by singing some ridiculously bawdy tavern song to keep up the pace during dull hours of walking long distances in the cold. He objects strenuously over small insignificant annoyances throughout the day, but buckles down without complaint by night, building fires and preparing whatever meager rations they’ve managed to barter for with unexpected skill.

Questing isn’t as glamorous in real life as it seems in the stories, Quentin thinks, but all the same, it would be far worse to do alone. He tries not to remember that Nigel is only leading him to the Drowned Garden, and the witch who cultivates it. After that, he’s on his own again.

One morning, when Quentin inevitably finds himself singing the same song that Nigel has gotten stuck in his head, Nigel turns around with a hand on his heart and says, “Such language, Quentin! What kind of hero are you?”

Quentin rolls his eyes. “You were literally singing the same song yesterday,” he protests.

“My voice _elevates_ the lyrics. On the other hand, whatever yours is doing is so far from my heights that it can hardly be called the same song,” and well, he’s not wrong, he has a beautiful voice, whereas Quentin’s is… loud, at best.

All the same, Quentin says, “I’m thinking very seriously about putting my hands around your neck and strangling you. The only thing that’s stopping me is that you’ve been stupidly vague about how to get to the Drowned Garden, so I need you alive for now.”

Whenever Quentin asks, Nigel just says, “I’ll know it when I see it,” in a lofty, annoying, sing-song tone, and usually adds something even more galling, like, “Patience, young hero.”

“Is that the only reason?” Nigel asks now, and his tone has gone a bit dark. Quentin looks up to see that he’s absently touching the scarf he’s wound around his neck, covering up any bare skin except his face.

Oh, right. Nigel hasn’t talked about his mysterious curse since the day they’ve met, and Quentin has shied from the topic, not wanting to upset him, but in addition to keeping himself austerely covered, sometimes, Nigel will react to offhanded comments like this, anything that hints at touching him. Quentin feels awkward when it happens, and sorry, but also desperately curious. He doesn’t dare to ask, though, and more often than not, the dark moments pass quickly.

Sure enough, Nigel smiles, quicksilver as always. “I thought it was because you’d have trouble reaching my neck from all the way down there,” he teases, and so of course, Quentin massacres the song more loudly in retaliation. (“At least you’ll scare away anyone who wishes us ill,” Nigel mutters, when Quentin pauses for breath.)

All in all, they’re having a relatively pleasant and uneventful day when Nigel halts suddenly. “This is it,” he says uncertainly, looking at a small dirt path that leads into the foothills, the entrance almost completely obscured by bramble. “I almost didn’t recognize it, without the flowers,” he adds.

Cutting their way through the overgrown, uphill path is tiring work, and neither of them are singing or speaking by the time they emerge to a clearing, where Quentin can see a long bridge stretching into the distance over a valley, its rails covered in creeping vines that are prematurely winter-bare of leaves or flowers. There’s another mountain at the far end of the bridge, with a winding path he can just make out.

“I thought you said it was called the Bridge of _Flowers_?” Quentin asks, stepping ahead, noting the conspicuous absence of any flora as he wanders forward.

Eyes fixed in the distance, searching for the witch’s cottage at the top of the distant mountain, he fails to notice the two men standing guard by the entrance of the bridge before one of them has yanked him forward, spun him around, and pinned him to the bridge’s gatepost, dangerously close to the edge of the cliff.

“Uh,” Quentin starts, confused and alarmed, but the man holding him by the neck tightens his grip warningly, so he shuts up.

Nigel, who had been following behind, halts in his tracks, holding both hands up in the air warily. “We seem to have misstepped in some way,” he says, presumably surveying the scene as well: Quentin in danger of being choked and/or thrown off a bridge, knapsack flung down in the dirt some feet away from him in the scuffle, and two men, dark skinned and capable looking, standing between them and their quest.

Knights, Quentin thinks, based on the shield and two swords that are resting by the remnants of a fire, though he can’t make out any recognizable coat of arms.

“Please, excuse us if we’ve offended,” Nigel continues. “We’re only travelers who seek to cross the bridge.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid no one is allowed to cross the bridge without paying the toll,” says the man not currently assaulting Quentin, who appears to be the elder. His manner is calm and soothing, but also firm. He also appears to be eyeing Nigel with a curious lack of hostility, given what his companion is doing to Quentin. Quentin struggles against the hold that the younger man has on him, but to no avail.

“Which is?” Nigel inquires politely.

“For two travelers? Four pieces of gold.” When Nigel scoffs, the man goes on, “It seems steep, but in these days without magic, everything is dear. We must make our living somehow. But I do apologize for the inconvenience.”

“You seem like a man of honor, in so much as such a thing exists,” Nigel says, light as anything, ambling forward like he’s taking a stroll for the pleasure of it. “I’ll be honest. We don’t have the gold. But we need to cross the bridge. So perhaps we can come to an arrangement?”

“What did you have in mind?”

Nigel, still ridiculously casually, picks up one of the swords resting on the ground, and lifts it up into a ready position with a showy sort of twirl. “We duel?” he inquires pleasantly.

“You sword fight now?” Quentin asks in disbelief, not meaning to speak aloud.

“Useful remnant of my unsavory past. You don’t?” Nigel replies, not looking at him. “What sort of hero are you?”

The knight’s sword is in his hand almost as soon as Nigel has spoken, also at the ready. “On the off chance you win, you and your companion cross the bridge, I assume,” he says, ignoring their exchange. “But when I win?”

Nigel smiles. “What would you have done with me if I had tried to run across without paying the toll?” he asks, coy.

The knight smiles in return. “Killed you where you stand.”

“Fine, then,” Nigel agrees, far too easily in Quentin’s opinion. He thinks he must make an indignant sound, or a movement, or something, because the brute holding him shoves him more firmly against the post, and Nigel’s expression flickers, though he still doesn’t look away from the knight. “And as a bonus, I promise I’ll make you work enough for it that you’ll have to take off that darling cape, and it’ll be fun for you. Let’s keep it to the grown-ups, though, hmm?” he adds, with a tilt of his head at Quentin and his captor, as though they can’t hear him.

“Don’t hurt him,” the knight directs, still staring at Nigel with undue interest.

“Father!” protests the hotheaded idiot.

“You heard me. Stand back, and keep him out of the way.”

And then they’re off. Quentin doesn’t have much frame of reference for sword fights, but this one seems… playful, which should make him happy, since Nigel probably isn’t as likely to get skewered at any moment, but it actually makes him feel rather sour, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s just that he’s being held in place, unable to make a useful contribution in any way. In either case, they’re pretty well matched: the knight is stronger, and his blows land with more force, but Nigel is quick and graceful and clever on his feet, so they don’t tend to land that often.

“It’s been some time since I had the pleasure of crossing swords with so talented an opponent,” says the knight, shrugging off his enviable fur cape after all, and what the fuck, is he flirting?

The knight’s son groans. Quentin finds himself sympathizing with his captor.

“You flatter me,” parries Nigel, sounding pleasantly breathless, as he sidesteps a particularly brutal attack.

“But even the most talented dancer tires after a time. And then what will we do?”

“Oh, darling,” Nigel says, “you have no idea how long I can dance.”

“Oh? I find myself thinking, if you could be persuaded to another type of dancing, I might be persuaded to drop the duel and let you cross the bridge.”

“Would that I were free,” Nigel sighs, sounding annoyingly quite sorry about it, “but you don’t understand the chains that bind me, good sir. I’d rather not place you at risk.”

Seriously? Whatever this curse of Nigel’s is, you’d think that he would at least use it to threaten people who are trying to _kill him_. It wouldn’t have to be full-body contact of the sort the knight seems to desire, Quentin thinks, still vexed at the idea. Nigel gets uppity about removing so much as his gloves to clean them, always standing far away from Quentin whenever he has to. The curse is obviously dangerous enough that a simple touch should suffice to incapacitate any opponent.

“Stop your squirming,” the knight’s son says, pushing Quentin back again. He hadn’t realized he was moving, but with the shove, Quentin hears something jingle in his captor’s pocket. Gold, he realizes suddenly, from others who have presumably paid the toll they’re extorting here.

The fight continues. It’s quite possible that Nigel could win, of course, but he could also lose, and that possibility is just not worth pursuing.

Quentin squirms again, on purpose this time. “I mean it,” the knight’s son threatens, still torn between restraining Quentin and following his father’s fight, and Quentin uses his moment of distraction to lift a few gold pieces from his pocket with his free hand, and hide them up his sleeve.

“Nig—” Quentin starts, but the knight’s son has reached his limit of patience, and tightens his grip on Quentin’s throat. Quentin chokes, panicked, but realizes after a few seconds that he can still breathe, with some difficulty.

“Quentin!” Nigel exclaims, and the split second hesitation is enough for the knight to press his advantage, and disarm him.

“It was well fought,” the knight says, holding his sword steady at Nigel’s heart. “I’m sorry to do it, but I must make an example of those who duel on my honor.”

Nigel lifts his chin. “Do it, then,” he says, and though _he’s_ remarkably calm, Quentin feels the bottom drop out of his own stomach. He tries to speak, but nothing comes out. “But honorable as you are, won’t you give a dying man your assurance that my companion goes free? Better yet, you might let him cross the bridge unmolested. Surely my sweat and blood are toll enough.” And then, with a wink, of all things, he adds, “And the memory of me kneeling for you, which I have no doubt will warm many a cold night.”

“You’re not kneeling,” the knight says, deadpan.

“So force me to my knees,” Nigel says, as though the man isn’t going to cut off his head when he does it. “Do I have to do everything around here?”

“Wait!” Quentin tries again, through the near-chokehold.

“Shut up, Quentin,” Nigel says tersely, but the knight looks over. He must signal something to his son, because the pressure on Quentin’s windpipe eases up a little.

“I’ve just remembered,” Quentin gasps. “We have some gold. I don’t know if it’s enough, but it’s in my… it’s a secret stash, just let me…”

The knight nods, apparently not thinking of Quentin as much of a threat. Released, Quentin staggers over to Nigel, eyeing the sword at his chest warily.

“Quentin, what are you—” Nigel hisses, as he passes.

“Just trust me,” Quentin mutters back, out of the corner of his mouth. He collects his knapsack from where it’s fallen in the dirt, reaches inside and shuffles around like he’s feeling for a secret compartment. “No weapons,” he says loudly, feeling the tension at his back, “just my—ah ha!” He lets the coins fall out of his sleeve into his palm, leaving one in the pack and pulling the other three out. “Three gold coins, wasn’t it?”

“It was four,” the knight says, but his hold on the sword has relaxed.

Quentin approaches slowly. “Yes, but you’ve had the pleasure of dancing with my companion,” he replies evenly. “That’s easily worth one.”

“I’m not sure if I should feel offended or not, at being such a bargain,” Nigel says, but after a second of staring at Quentin, the knight laughs and puts down his sword.

“Easily,” he agrees, obviously relieved not to have to dispatch Nigel and still keep his honor, and when Quentin tosses him the coins, he catches them without difficulty. Then, he turns to smile at Nigel. “You were right. I had fun.”

“I keep my promises,” Nigel responds, “but if it’s no trouble to you, I’ll keep your sword as well. In case we run into trouble on the other side.”

“It’s a spare,” the knight says. “Keep it with my compliments.”

Nigel smiles again, all brazenness. “I’ll think of you when I use it,” he says, and okay, that’s enough.

Quentin grabs Nigel’s elbow. It’s safely covered, but the touch has the expected consequence of making him jump. “Nigel. Let’s go.”

“All right,” he says, shaking off Quentin’s hold, and they make their way on to the bridge. “Where did you—” Nigel starts, but Quentin shakes his head.

“Later. Once we’re on the other side. Just keep walking.” He doesn’t dare to run in case it arouses suspicion, so they make the whole harrowing way across the bridge at only a slightly fast clip.

“Okay, we made it. And I know you didn’t have any gold when we were trying to barter for food at the last village. So?”

“So,” Quentin says, risking a look back over his shoulder, but no one’s followed them. And then he explains about the gold the knight’s son had jingling away in his jacket.

Nigel halts in his tracks, forcing Quentin to stop too. “You _pickpocketed_ him while he had you pinned, and then paid them off with their own gold?”

“Yeah, so we should probably hurry up and get some distance between us before they figure it out,” Quentin says, though he hopes the length of the bridge is enough of a head start.

“What the fuck?”

“You’re not the only one with a few skills left over from a less-than-savory past,” Quentin says with a shrug. He’s trying to sound casual, but really, he’s inordinately pleased by Nigel’s flabbergasted face. “So, what kind of hero does that make me?”

Nigel laughs, a helpless aborted little exhale of a sound. “A surprisingly interesting one,” he answers, with a flicker of his gaze over Quentin’s person, wearing an expression Quentin can’t quite read.

It’s getting colder as they prepare to hike up the tortuous mountain path that leads to the witch’s cottage, but something about that look makes Quentin’s skin prickle with unexpected warmth.

In any case, Nigel smiles brightly over his shoulder from where he’s taken the lead again, the odd tension vanishing. “Well, come on, hero. You’ve been holding out on me. Regale me with sordid tales of your unsavory past.”

“Only if you tell me where you learned to sword fight like that.”

“It was rather a good fight, wasn’t it? I mean, I was a wonder, but that knight wasn’t too shabby either,” Nigel says, with a little too much relish.

Quentin rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Speaking of which. You might have mentioned running into two extortionist knights the last time you were at the Bridge of Flowers before we wandered up there unprepared, oh wise guide.”

“They weren’t there before,” Nigel says, which Quentin had actually guessed, but still. Ribbing Nigel is fun. “They must have set up camp there after magic was lost; easy way to make a living, I guess. Before, there was this other knight, who was so old and decrepit I thought he was dead at first. He didn’t ask me for a toll, but he’s the one who told me about the witch we’re going to see.”

“You didn’t go see her before, though?” Quentin asks, because this is the most Nigel has talked about his knowledge of the Drowned Garden, or his life before Chatwin’s Torrent at all. “You weren’t looking for the Drowned Garden on purpose?”

“I didn’t even know it was called that,” Nigel answers. “Like I said, the path had a lot more flowers when I passed by the first time. It caught my eye, and I was just curious. And then, the bridge was really beautiful too, before. So I asked the guy where it led, and he told me about a witch with secret stores of magic, hidden in a flower garden. I figured it was like, you pick the flowers and get the magic, so when you said you needed magic to defeat the Beast, I thought of it.”

“You don’t pick the flowers!” Quentin interjects, scandalized. “You listen to their stories.”

“Oh, a talking flower garden, of course. That should have been my first assumption. How is this going to be useful to you, again?”

“They tell you—how can you not know this? You face the flowers with your inquiries, and if they deem you worthy, they give you their stories, the stories you need to hear. It’s like, knowledge. The pursuit of truth. One of the fundamental building blocks of magic.”

“Hm. I guess I misunderstood. The old knight did say that if I had questions about magic, the witch who lived in the cottage was a font of knowledge, so I figured she was the one who had answers.”

“You didn’t want to hear what she would say, anyway? Or go see if the magic of the flowers could help you?” Quentin asks. He carefully doesn’t mention Nigel’s curse, but Nigel gets the hint.

“I don’t need to,” he says shortly. “I already know everything I need to know about it. Enough to know that she can’t help.”

It doesn’t sit well with Quentin, but he supposes the best thing to do is leave it alone. Nigel’s curse is his business, and he’s lived with it a lot longer than Quentin has. Quentin has his own quest to complete, and should probably stay out of it.

Nigel continues, sounding highly skeptical, “And neither can her flowers. Stories, really? How is that a source of magic? I can understand if these flowers answered your questions with _facts_; that would at least be a useful party trick. You could ask, say, ‘where is the Castle at the End of the World?’ or ‘how do I defeat the Beast?’ But this sounds a lot more like fiction, which is like, the opposite of truth, isn’t it?”

“But the truth is more than the facts,” Quentin says.

“Uh, I think you’ll find that the facts, when correctly stated, literally _are_ the truth.”

“No, come on. Don’t you get it?” Nigel just stares at him blankly. They’ve stopped walking again. Quentin tries to find words for something which feels so essential to him, like he’s always known it, but for some reason, all he can think of is Nigel tipping his chin up, practically asking to die.

“Look. If you’d knelt down and told that knight to kill you and he’d done it…” Quentin trails off for a second, not looking at Nigel’s face, just remembering it. “You’d be dead. That’s fact. But. If you did it for me, to save my life. Or if you did it because you thought it didn’t matter, or because you didn’t care about living anymore.” He pauses, again cautious when talking around Nigel’s curse, but Nigel doesn’t cut him off, doesn’t make a sound this time. “Or if you tried to stop it, and he did it anyway. It’s different, right? That’s the story I’d carry in my heart. The truth of you.”

The stories do matter: where people come from, the emotions that drive them, the effort they make, the intent with which they act, as much as or even more than the outcome, sometimes. Quentin believes that with his whole heart. But all the same, even as he says it, he feels like he’s used the wrong example, somehow. Because if Nigel had died…

“Uh, no. If they’d killed you, just pushed you off that bridge, I wouldn’t have cared if it was to save me, or to save magic, or save whoever,” Nigel argues, interrupting that wisp of thought. “You’d be gone. Who cares why you did it? The facts _are_ what matter, sometimes. Everything else is just a story you tell to make yourself feel better, and frankly, I’m not sure it would work.”

Nigel’s not wrong, Quentin realizes, troubled. If he were gone, Quentin maybe, actually, wouldn’t care why he was gone. His absence would be too much on its own to consider anything else. Nigel takes up so much space in Quentin’s world, this world without magic, but still with him in it. They’ve known each other for such a short time; how is it possible he’s become so important? Maybe because he feels like the only other person in existence on this quest, the only one who’s real, somehow.

It makes Quentin reconsider, but it’s not enough to blot out the certainty at his core. If it doesn’t matter why you do things, then it becomes easier and easier to think that nothing you do matters at all. That nothing matters at all. Why do anything? Why try? Which seems to be the sinkhole into which Nigel has fallen, and that’s not right, either, Quentin knows it’s not. It’s not black and white like that. It can’t be.

Facts matter, Quentin thinks, but so do fictions, or rather, narratives. Motives and character arcs. How you live your own story, and how people will read it, and tell it. Because therein lies the possibility, beyond the static nature of the facts. There’s the ability to change, and grow, and improve; to try, to fail, to try again and triumph; to leave a mark on the world, or even on just one other person, for the better. Isn’t that what all magic is about, in the end?

Maybe it all stutters when you’re faced with a cold, hard fact like the loss of someone you really care about, but only because what that loss makes you feel is stronger than everything else, magic of the most powerful kind.

Love is the worst pain, Nigel had said. But the magic that bleeds out of it, every glance, every touch, every kiss imbued with even a drop of that mystical, protean quantity called _true love_… is there anything stronger in all the universe? It’s enough to defeat any beast, break any curse. Isn’t that what’s driving Quentin, and what he’s counting on, here, to complete his quest?

“Yeah, all right,” Quentin concedes. “But that’s a special case. My point is, the facts are obviously central to the truth. But they’re not all of it. The stories—the things we create from the facts, the reasons behind them, the way they make us feel—all of those make up the truth. So the flowers… they give us their stories, so that we can interpret, and build what we need to from them. There’s magic in that process, the purest kind. Storytelling.”

Perhaps there’s more than one truth. Or maybe there’s just more than one way of seeing it, infinite ways, all the perspectives of everyone who thinks and breathes and feels. Every story is a lens, or a mirror, a way of seeing. What matters in the end is which one you believe, isn’t it?

“So I have to believe that if I stand in the Drowned Garden, the flowers will point me to where I have to go, to fulfill my quest. If they judge my heart to be true enough, that is.”

Nigel still doesn’t look fully convinced, but he says, brusque as anything, “I don’t think you have to worry about that part,” and picks up his pace before Quentin can figure out what to say to that.

The sun is beginning to set when they reach the clearing at the top of the mountain path, and the house of the witch who lives there.

She’s standing on her porch in front of the door, which is ajar. She watches them as they approach, but doesn’t speak at first. There’s a small grass plot in front of the house, with no flowers that Quentin can see.

The witch is slight, with long dark hair, and an unequivocal but confusing air of great power. It’s especially transcendent and off-putting now that there’s no other magic in the world: something about her, and the apparently unremarkable scene she occupies, seems, invisibly, to spark and glow.

“Hello,” Quentin says.

“Hello,” she says. “Who are you, and what brings you to my abode, travelers?”

Quentin has stopped at the base of the steps in front of the porch, and looks up at her like a man petitioning a goddess. “My name is Quentin, and this is Nigel, my guide. I seek knowledge,” he says, “the truth. May I have leave to visit your flower garden? And, of course, I’d be happy for any wisdom that, um, you might offer me, too,” he adds, remembering what Nigel had told him about the witch being renowned as a font of knowledge, and not wishing to offend.

She regards him for a few seconds, before coming down the steps to stand in front of him and Nigel. “The pursuit of knowledge is a valuable one, for its own sake,” the witch says. “But you might tell me, in regards to what?”

“Uh, yeah.” Haltingly, Quentin explains that he’s on a quest to defeat the Beast, save his love, and restore magic to the world. He thinks the witch looks a little amused, and why shouldn’t she? It’s not like he cuts a particularly heroic figure. But he stutters his way to the end of the explanation anyway, and her eyes, though laughing at him, are kind.

“I can see that your undertaking is a worthy one. And I might have information that could help you,” she says. “But first, please feel free to visit my garden. It’s just around the back of the house.” She gestures to a side path. “Then, return by the same path, to the front of the house. You and your companion must be tired, after your long journey. You can rest, before setting off on the next stage.”

* * *

Quentin vanishes around the corner. When Nigel makes to follow him, however, the witch stops him. His stomach drops uneasily. “My friend, is he—” he starts.

“He’s not okay,” the witch answers. “But it’s not me you have to fear.”

“What do you mean? You’re the one who’s—if you’ve hurt him…”

“I haven’t,” she says, more urgently. “Not me. I won’t speak your name in this place, but I know the burden you carry.”

Nigel clutches a hand to his chest, instinctively feeling for the pouch he wears around his neck, and as he touches it, he blinks, and it’s Julia, Eliot realizes. “Fuck,” he says, “This is a—” Don’t say dream, don’t say spell, he reminds himself. “—trip. Oh fuck.”

“Don’t use my name, here,” Julia warns. “_Nigel_,” she adds, raising her eyebrows, and she gestures at him to come inside the house.

Eliot rolls his eyes and follows her. “Yes, _witch_,” he replies, glancing around quickly. It’s a single room, with a table and a fireplace. Apart from the front door through which they entered, there’s another door on the wall opposite, leading into the garden.

“So, tell me of your travels,” she says cautiously, as they sit down at the table, and he understands that she wants them to continue in the code of the dream as much as possible.

“You’ve heard most of it from my companion,” he says. “But, so you know how things are, uh, working. The spring where we met? The, um, _river_ that starts the quest? Is called Chatwin’s Torrent.”

It’s Quentin’s mind, mediating the original dream outline they’ve given him, adding aspects of Fillory, and conversations that he and Eliot have already had, though perhaps Julia doesn’t know that last part.

“I see,” Julia says, clearly understanding what he's getting at.

“More than that, I told him about your flower garden,” an aspect of the original fairytale which had been woven into the dream spell, “but he’s the one who, uh, _recognized_ it as the so-called ‘Drowned Garden,’ a name I didn’t know, but I assume is also from…”

“Yes,” Julia answers. “Certain books. Okay. We can work with this. So, he’s on a quest to defeat the Beast who took his beloved, and also to return magic to the land. A combination of things, but not unfamiliar to us,” she muses out loud.

“Yeah, with the minor change that his beloved isn’t dead. She’s been taken captive.”

“So far, so good. He defeats the Beast, restores magic, gets the girl,” and gets the fuck out, her eyes say.

“A real hero,” Eliot agrees.

“And you?” she asks, surveying his tragic get-up skeptically and wrinkling her nose. “What’s with the outfit? What are you, a monk? Because that’s unexpected.”

He sighs, and takes off his gloves, surveying his hands. “I know, right? But no, this is some kind of irrelevant side plot. I’m cursed, apparently.”

“What?” she asks, concerned. “This isn’t part of… is this his—you know—impression of you?”

“I don’t know,” Eliot says, “but I don’t think so. In fact, I suspect this might be my shit. The subterranean dwelling stuff, you know,” he says, by way of not saying “subconscious” while in this dream curse. Because honestly, Eliot casting himself as somebody literally _untouchable_, and then having his character pine fruitlessly after Quentin’s oblivious romantic hero type, like the earnest boy’s going to _save him_? It’s a little too close for comfort.

“Oh,” Julia says, still sounding a bit confused, which is good, because Eliot doesn’t particularly want her to understand this embarrassing part of his psyche. “Well, do you think it’ll get in the way of things? The quest? We don’t want you guys to get side-tracked.”

“I doubt it,” Eliot says. “We’ve barely even talked about my curse since the day we met. I, Nigel, am not particularly open about it. In fact, the curse is literally locked away in the conveniently locked pouch I am carrying at all times. Given to me by a friend.” He winks at her. Seriously, repression. He does it, his questing fairytale counterpart does it, it’s just a thing you have to do.

Actually, come to think of it, it’s hard for him to even recall the details of Nigel’s curse. He thinks he could do it, with enough effort, but huh. This is probably what Penny-23 had meant, that it would be hard to hold on to a dual consciousness for long. He’s Eliot, and he’s Nigel, but reaching too deeply for one or the other feels tenuous, like he’s in danger of flipping a toggle switch instead of retaining both identities at once. Nigel isn’t pure, simplistic archetype, like Julia’s witch, but a character with real complexity. Because of his prominence in the dream, he’s got a history, and a personality, and problems galore, and it would be far too easy for Eliot to lose himself in the fiction.

Wasn’t Quentin talking about that? The paradox of fictions that reveal the truth?

“Anyway, Quentin should still be one hundred percent focused on getting to Al—the end of his quest,” Eliot says, getting back to the point.

“Okay. I’m sending you to the princess and prince next. Because they might know about a weapon that can be used against the Beast,” she reminds him. Oh, thank God, Eliot thinks. As much as she’s going to loathe being called “princess,” he needs Bambi right now. Julia taps her fingers absently against the wooden table. “One that’s powered by the strongest magic in the world, and can only be wielded by those of the truest heart. When he gets back, I’ll tell him. He should interpret that… I think that should work,” she says to herself.

They wait for a few minutes, but Quentin fails to reappear. “What are those flowers telling him, anyway?” Eliot asks.

“Hmm? Oh, the flower garden. I didn’t actually—they don’t have a spiel, or anything.” Right, Julia hadn’t written a script for them into the spell. In “The Snow Queen,” Eliot recalls, several flowers tell stories, but here, the entire thing was more of a ruse to split them up, so that Julia could get her status report from Eliot before sending them both off on the next stage of the quest. Julia’s witch is supposed to be the actual source of knowledge pointing Quentin in the right direction, not the garden.

That’s interesting. “So, whatever they’re saying, it’s really just something—” Something that Quentin’s telling himself, Eliot realizes. Quentin is the one whose mind had taken the idea of the flower garden and interpreted it as some sort of truth-revealing magical place. Which begs the question, what exactly is he…

At that moment, there’s a crashing roll of thunder, and they both jump. Rain starts pattering down hard on the roof of the cottage.

Eliot and Julia look at each other. “That doesn’t sound normal,” he says.

“No,” she agrees.

“In fact, it sounds distinctly hostile. Like the _world itself_ is turning against us.”

“Is it what we’re talking about?” Julia asks. But they haven’t really said anything particularly incriminating that would set off the dream curse’s hackles, have they?

“Oh, no. _Flowers that tell you the stories you need to hear._ It’s Quentin!” Eliot realizes, alarmed, and runs toward the back door of the cottage.

“Wait,” Julia says, raising her voice over the sound of what is fast turning into a serious storm. She throws caution to the wind in her haste to explain. “It’s a maze! Crossing that door in either direction will take you to the next _room, _you see? You have to pull him into the threshold at the same time and go together.”

“Fine!” Eliot shouts back. He thinks there’s now an earthquake going on too, or the ground is literally starting to split under the combined forces of the wind and the rain and the electrical storm. The dream spell is destabilizing. “Quentin!” he calls, but there’s no answer.

“But first, I have to…” Julia dashes forward and opens the pouch he wears, drops a little stone into it, and seals the fastenings.

Nigel looks up, a bit confused by all the din. He checks instinctively for the Fairy Queen’s gift, which is hanging around his neck as always, though outside of his clothes. He tucks it away. Then he remembers that Quentin is in the garden, trying to talk to the witch’s flowers, but the storm is growing dangerous.

“Quentin!” he shouts, and sees a dark shape running toward the door.

“Nigel,” the witch says quickly, over the noise. She’s gesturing strangely, like she’s dancing, or casting a spell. “Don’t forget what we talked about. You must take your companion to see the princess I told you of, and her prince. They’ll be able to help him further with his quest, for they may know of a weapon to defeat the Beast.”

He barely absorbs what she’s saying, reaching his arms out into the gale and pulling Quentin’s fast approaching form across the threshold.

* * *

Quentin stands in the garden.

It’s a beautiful place, after so much unnatural barrenness. He can feel it coursing in the ground beneath his feet, and in the air surrounding him: magic.

There are flowers everywhere, some clustered together, some standing apart, a myriad varieties. He doesn’t know where to begin now that he’s here, which flowers to face, how to frame his question, how to prove himself worthy of the answers they can provide.

“I loved a girl,” he says at last, like he had told Nigel when they met. “I loved magic. I lost them both.”

There’s no answer but the ongoing silence.

“I lost everything,” he continues. “I didn’t think I could go on. But I did. I don’t know what it is in me, that allowed me to do that, and I don’t know if it makes me a hero, or worthy of your stories.”

He laughs a little, thinking about Nigel. _What kind of hero are you?_

“And I’m not here on my own, I’ve had a lot of help. But I’ve come this far, haven’t I?”

If this is the song people will sing of him, if he’s smack dab in the middle of his story, then where does it lead? That awful day, lying on the ground, thinking he would never get up again, he thought it would end in desolation, but it hasn’t. Every day he’s lived since then, every step he’s taken, has eventually brought him somewhere brighter. Quentin thinks about seeing Chatwin’s Torrent, and remembering that magic exists, and that as much as it can hurt, it can heal, too. He thinks about meeting a cursed man who didn’t believe in anything, but set out on a quest with him anyway, out of nothing besides the innate goodness of one person realizing they could help another. He thinks about laughter and songs and bickering about the nature of truth, and realizing that he still had the capacity to make a connection, a friend.

The Beast has taken a lot from him, but not everything.

“Everything that’s happened, that’s brought me here. It has to lead to something, right? It has to mean something. It’s getting better, and maybe it’ll just keep getting better, as long as I keep trying. I’m not sure how I’m going to do this. But I want to try. So, please. Tell me the truth of where I am, and where I’m going. The story of my quest.”

Purely on instinct, he touches one flower, a flame-red bloom that catches his eye.

“My tale is of a titan called Prometheus,” it says. “He stole fire from the gods, to give to mankind, and suffered dearly for it.”

Okay. It’s nothing to do with the Beast, or his beloved, or the Castle at the End of the World, but… “I know this story,” Quentin says slowly. But it wasn’t actually fire, was it? That’s the myth, but as he had learned, Prometheus actually gave humanity the gift of…

The ground shudders and trembles; the windows of the little cottage rattle behind him. The sky above has abruptly grown gray and swirling, threatening a storm.

Quentin takes a step back toward the house, but as he does, he sees a patch of deep purple flowers shaped like bells, fluttering and beckoning in the rising wind. Despite the threat of the storm, something makes him kneel and brush his fingertips against a particularly brilliant purple flower too.

“I tell the sequel: the story of the woman called Pandora,” says the purple bellflower. “Created by Zeus to punish mankind for Prometheus’s gift of fire. She was given a jar she was told never to open—”

“Pandora’s box,” Quentin says to himself.

“—but in her curiosity, she opened it, and released evil into the world: war, vice, disease, death, toil. By the time she shut the lid, only one thing remained within.”

Quentin knows this myth too, and the philosophical question contained within it. Because the thing left in the box: was it a positive, mankind’s recompense for all the horrors released, or was it the greatest evil of all?

The Greek probably translates most closely to _expectation_, he remembers, or perhaps _anticipation_, but there’s another word for it, the one most colloquially used, and that’s…

But wait. Why does he know this? Quentin’s not a philosophy undergraduate student. He’s not a graduate student in magic. Is he?

The earth shakes again, unstable. Lightning flashes in the sky, followed by a roll of thunder. He has to get back inside. He has to find Nigel, and return to his quest.

But there’s one last patch of flowers that draws his attention, starkly golden against the darkening gloom. He hesitates, but runs over to them instead of the door to the witch’s cottage. He touches a petal as rain pours from the sky, and he can barely hear its voice over the din.

“I sing a song of a nameless creature, the last monster within the castle, the only thing that Pandora managed to trap. Yet some would say this was the most dangerous of all; certainly, the gods feared its power, and mankind would hate it and love it in equal measure. But my story has a secret, which is that this monster can never truly be trapped, once it is named. For it has the power to create itself out of nothing, to destroy the hold of all the other evils, and to fly freely out of any cage.”

_What’s locked inside that castle can never, ever be allowed to escape. _

Who had said that, again? Whoever it had been, they had been talking about an actual monster, Quentin thinks, not this metaphorical thing that Pandora trapped, right? The expectation, the anticipation that everything bad can turn good again. That there’s still a chance, there’s still…

Oh. “Ho—” he starts to say, and there’s a flash of lightning right in front of his feet, and the earth splits open in front of him.

“Quentin, you have to get inside!” Eliot yells from the door. He’s holding out his hands.

Quentin dashes over the collapsing ground and makes a running leap, the sort of weightless jump you can only manage in dreams, but he catches Eliot’s hands and—

Wait, _Eliot_?

—Eliot pulls him over the threshold—no, it’s Nigel, isn’t it?—and it all goes black.

* * *

The early morning air is cold and the sunshine weak and watery as Quentin and Nigel make their way down the other side of the mountain, but there’s no sign of the freak storm that hit the night before. Strange, Quentin thinks, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He doesn’t recall much of what happened after Nigel pulled him over the threshold and out of the garden. He supposes that’s also a bit strange, but it doesn’t bother him that much. He assumes he spent the night in the witch’s cottage, because he feels well-fed and well-rested, this morning.

They’re off to another kingdom, to see a princess about a magical weapon that the witch had told Nigel about while Quentin was occupied in the garden. Nigel’s rather excited about it, actually, because he’s apparently heard of the princess in question before.

“She’s amazing, Quentin, just you wait and see. And whatever you do, don’t call her a princess to her face. After her father died, she was told it was her duty to marry so that her kingdom to have a High King again, but she wasn’t having any of it.”

Quentin laughs at his unprecedented enthusiasm. “Well, this explains why you’re still with me,” he says.

“Hmm?” Nigel asks, still absorbed in his raptures about the princess.

“Your passionate admiration for this princess,” Quentin says. “Because I mean, weren’t you just going to bring me to the witch? You’ve fulfilled your end of our agreement.” He’s still smiling, aiming for a teasing tone, but it falls flat.

“Oh,” Nigel says, smile dropping off his face. “You’re right.”

“Oh, no, not that—I mean, I’m glad of your company. I just meant. We only said—you don’t have to, not if you don’t want to. If you want to go back, or stay in the princess’s kingdom, or you know, whatever. You can.”

“I can,” Nigel repeats.

“I don’t want you to go,” Quentin says, more firmly. The idea of doing this without Nigel by his side is awful, but neither does Quentin want to force him into more dangerous situations against his will. The knights at the bridge, the lightning storm last night… who knows what’s coming next? “But if you don’t want to endanger yourself, or you know, if you have better things to do, you’re free, that’s all. I know you don’t believe… you don’t have a stake in this, like I do.”

Nigel says, almost to himself, “I’ve come this far, haven’t I?”

The phrase abruptly makes Quentin think about the previous night, and his thoughts in the Drowned Garden. “That’s what I told the flowers,” he says, remembering. “That I was in the middle of my quest, and wanted to know where it led.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Nigel says, sounding surprised. “We’ve been so occupied by what the witch told me that I forgot to ask what the flowers told you. So, what was the story?”

“I don’t—it was odd,” Quentin says. The memory feels hazy, obscured by a veil of rain and wind and darkness. “They told me about a man who stole something from the gods, and then got punished. By a woman.”

Nigel raises his eyebrows. “And this is the truth of yourself? Do go on,” he says with a leer, and Quentin laughs.

“Not like that. It’s like, there was something trapped, somewhere, a monster in a prison.” The story had been so familiar. “Something dangerous and nameless, but I don’t think it was really a monster, not the way—and they said, it was free to leave whenever it wanted, if it could find its name.”

“Not a very secure prison then,” Nigel says.

“Or the most secure. Because how do you name something if you don’t know what it is?” Quentin thinks a little longer, but his mind remains frustratingly blank. Eventually, he shakes himself out of his reflections with a rueful smile. “Anyway, yeah. So that was their nonsensical answer to my question about where my quest was leading me. So much for my argument about storytelling being a source of magic, and a means of reaching the truth. Maybe you were right; you got the facts, and they’re what’re taking us forward.”

“I don’t know,” Nigel responds unexpectedly. “I mean, I’m no expert, but you said these flowers tell you the stories you need to hear, right? Maybe they are answering your question, and you just can’t understand it yet. But as long as you keep trying, and following your heart, the truth of what they’re saying will reveal itself to you when you need it. Like any good story, in the final pages.”

“Since when do you believe in all that?” Quentin asks.

“I don’t. Not in _all that_, hero,” he says, and his eyes are so warm for a second that Quentin feels almost flushed by their regard.

“You held my hands,” Quentin says suddenly, apropos of nothing.

“What?”

“When you pulled me over the threshold, to save me from the storm. You weren’t wearing your gloves.” He doesn’t ask the question, but he waits.

Nigel keeps walking in silence for a minute or two. This time, when he speaks again, he pointedly avoids Quentin’s gaze.

“These are the facts,” Nigel says finally. “I was cursed. In another land, far from here.”

Quentin says nothing, letting him continue if he wants to.

“I was born the youngest of many brothers, all of them made in the mold of our father. But I—when I was younger, I tried. I apprenticed with a blacksmith. I learned to use a sword. But the more I tried to carve myself to fit their mold, the more I realized that there would be nothing left of me at the end of it. They didn’t want me.”

Quentin’s heart aches. “Nigel,” he says.

“One day, nothing out of the ordinary, it was too much, and I decided to leave. I don’t know what madness or selfishness drove me to it, but it felt like courage, at the time. I was reckless and foolhardy. Instead of stealing away in the night, I confronted my father in front of the whole village. I wanted to hurt him, to see him brought low, the way he’d always—so I challenged him to a duel.

“By this time, he was old, and I would’ve won, everyone knew that. I didn’t want to fight him. I just wanted to humiliate him, make him concede. But one of my brothers accepted the challenge on his behalf. He’d always been stronger, always tormented me, and he probably thought that he could just… put me back in my place, like when we were children. But then we fought, and I killed him.”

Nigel’s voice is neutral and calm, like he’s talking about something that happened to someone else. Quentin wants to reach out for him, but he’s held in place, wrapped up in the horror and pain, all the worse for Nigel’s emotionless telling of it.

“I threw down my sword. I swore I would never pick one up again. I fell to my knees by his body. I begged his forgiveness, I begged my father’s. But he was still dead.”

“Nigel,” Quentin whispers, searching for anything that might help, “you couldn’t have—it’s not your—”

“They cast me out. Our village lay in the shadow of the land of the Fae, and as I left, my father spoke a curse that became truth, the way curses do, when the Fae hear them spoken. That, having abandoned the way of my people and the work of my hands, having slain my own kin, everything and everyone I touched would come to ruin.”

“And then you came to Chatwin’s Torrent?” Quentin asks.

Nigel laughs bitterly, the first emotion he’s shown throughout his tale. “No. I ran. You forget how young I was, Quentin. I couldn’t handle the guilt, so I seized upon the rage, and the rebellion. I laughed at the curse, and I kept running, and I told myself I didn’t care where I ended up, so long as it was a path leading anywhere other than that godsforsaken village. I drank. I fucked anyone and touched anything they would let me. And as time went by, and nothing happened, I came to believe that I was free, and that my father’s words had been just that: words.”

“But then?” Quentin says, hearing the fear in his own voice.

“But then, I made friends,” Nigel answers. “I stopped running. I fell in—we had a family. Years passed, the happiest of my life. But always, at the back of my mind, I felt the curse weighing upon me. And one day, it made itself known again.”

“What happened?” Quentin asks carefully. “To your friends, the person you fell—”

“I lost him,” Nigel says, cuttingly quiet. “All of them. And I did it myself, with my own…” He clenches his hands into fists, then relaxes them, forcefully. “And then it came on in force. I touched flowers, and they withered. Animals, dead by my hand. So you see,” he finishes, looking at Quentin at last, “I learned my lesson. I came somewhere far away, where I wouldn’t know anyone, and no one would touch me, and they could never be hurt.”

“You came to Chatwin’s Torrent,” Quentin repeats.

“Well,” Nigel says, with a careless shrug, “at least if I hurt someone, there was easy healing nearby.”

“But Nigel,” Quentin says, after a moment, unsure if he’s going too far, “all curses can be broken. You _touched_ me, and I’m fine. Surely, that means there might be a way—”

“You think I haven’t thought of that?” Nigel interrupts sharply. He takes a breath, calms himself visibly. “I tried, okay? After everything happened, I did something I said I would never do. I returned to my village. My father was dead, and my other brothers grown, with their own families. I didn’t see them, but I thought, perhaps now that he was gone... so I ventured into the forest, to the realm of the Fairy Queen, to ask if I could ever be free of this.” He scoffs. “She told me she could not remove it, but for a price, she would lock it away, make it less harmful to others.”

He draws the string he wears around his neck out from under his collar, and Quentin can see now that what hangs on it is a small leather pouch, twined shut with silver fastenings.

“Her gift ameliorates the effects,” Nigel explains. “The worst of it is locked within, so that if someone brushes against my skin by accident, they need not die from the curse. A casual touch is safe enough.”

“Okay,” Quentin says, considering that. “But what does that mean, exactly, ‘casual’? Like, brief? How brief counts as casual? Or is it more about intent, like it has to be an accidental touch? Or how well you know the person touching you, like intimacy? Because you held my hands and saved my life, and that may be _brief_, but it’s meaningful—how can that be casual? Have you ever tried—”

“In truth, I have not tested it on the unsuspecting masses, tempted though I am sometimes,” Nigel says, wry, and oh, Quentin supposes that makes sense. “As you know, I try not to touch anyone, just in case. Gods, Quentin, you ask so many questions. Too many. It makes me wonder, like I haven’t in a long time, and that’s not to be borne,” he adds, but there’s a smile in his voice now, and he sounds lighter and fonder than he has throughout this conversation. Bright, somehow.

But Quentin feels very sad, all of a sudden, at the thought of Nigel going through his life, never touching anyone. Never feeling free to accept a touch of kindness, or concern, or love. Floating on the surface of Chatwin’s Torrent because he felt like he had nowhere else to go, and no one to care where he had gone. Not bothering to cross the Bridge of Flowers and visit the Drowned Garden for himself, because he thought there was nothing more that could be done than what he already had.

And he’d paid a price, just to get that much: the ability to not hurt someone if they touch him by accident.

He’s here, accompanying Quentin on his quest, risking his own life and saving Quentin’s more than once, and for all that he whines about the lack of proper food and the chill in the air and Quentin’s off-key singing, he hasn’t complained about this at all.

Quentin wants to take his hand. Grasp his shoulder. Brush that distracting ringlet of hair out of his face when he sleeps. Just little things, to express the sudden outpouring of sympathy and gratitude and affection he feels, which have perhaps been there, growing all along.

He doesn’t. He knows enough now to understand why the touch would only make Nigel flinch.

“What was the price?” Quentin asks finally, and Nigel smiles without any mirth whatsoever.

“Just that it’s very heavy. Strains my neck,” he says, an obvious lie, tucking the pouch back under his tunic, and leaves it at that.

Well, that’s it, Quentin decides. He’s not much of a hero, perhaps, but he’s already taken it upon himself to slay the Beast and save magic and his love. So, he promises silently, either along the way, or once it’s all done, he’ll figure out how to break Nigel’s curse, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The basic idea behind _Inception_ is that technology has been developed which allows people to participate in shared and conscious dreaming. As a result, dream espionage has become a thing: dream thieves use architects to “build” dreams, into which they draw their subjects. The subject will unwittingly populate the world of the dream with their subconscious, which the thieves can then probe to steal secrets, etc. It’s a lot more complicated and awesome than that, but for the purposes of this story, magic allows for a similar type of shared dreaming experience. 
> 
> “The Snow Queen” is, of course, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which is (very loosely) the model for the quest. For reference, the original seven “episodes” are:
> 
> i. which has to do with a mirror and its fragments  
ii. a little boy and a little girl  
iii. the flower garden of the woman skilled in magic  
iv. the prince and the princess  
v. the little robber girl  
vi. the Lapp woman and the Finn woman  
vii. what happened in the Snow Queen’s palace and what came of it
> 
> The myth of Pandora's Box really does follow the story of Prometheus, although I've obviously taken liberties with it here.
> 
> Did I really come up with this complex frame story just to have an excuse to write Quentin and Eliot going on a fairytale quest together? You bet... Anyway, thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	2. Truths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace yourselves, it’s a long one. And note that there’s now a third chapter, because the little epilogue worked better on its own.
> 
> Warnings: this chapter contains depictions of depression and active suicidality, including what could reasonably be interpreted as an aborted suicide attempt. It is all stylized through the lens of fairytale, and occurs in the dream world, so no one is in actual danger of physical harm, but the implication is clear, so I wanted to warn explicitly. For more details, see the chapter end notes.

_The quest is supposed to change us._

**iv. The High King and the Fresh Prince**

“You’re just in time,” the sentry at the door says. “Come in, come in.”

Quentin, grateful to escape the brisk evening air, walks through an ornate entryway with high ceilings, Nigel following behind.

It’s only after the door has shut at their backs that Quentin says, “Uh, in time for what?”

The sentry, a young man with dark hair and a guileless smile, laughs like Quentin has just told a particularly hilarious joke. “Oh, you’re funny. Why, the gala to commemorate the coronation of the High King, of course—”

“The princess got married to give the kingdom a king after all?” Quentin asks, disappointed after how much Nigel has regaled him with tales of the princess’s ingenuity and boldness, even more so than her astonishing beauty. How sure he’d been that she would think her way out of her advisers’ machinations.

How Nigel knows all this, however, remains a mystery, perhaps even to Nigel himself. He’s never met her before, he admits.

“I don’t know,” he says, when Quentin asks. “I must have picked up tidbits in my travels, rumors and the like. I just feel like I know her, somehow. A kinship. Sometimes you just know, don’t you?”

It’s a terribly romantic thought for such an overtly cynical man, but Quentin refrains from pointing that out. Oh, Nigel mocks Quentin endlessly, and it’s one of Quentin’s great pleasures to give back as good as he gets, mostly to see that particular smile hover in the curve of Nigel’s lips before he gives in and laughs, something a little startled and impressed and warm, happy that Quentin’s teasing him in return. It settles something anxious and perpetually fluttering in Quentin, to know that Nigel’s just as grateful to have found a friend as he himself is, even if they never say as much out loud.

But he catches himself, the first time he’s about to make a snarky comment about how Nigel’s obviously half in love with this woman, sight unseen. Because even if it were true, Nigel would never feel free to act on it, would he? And then it’s not funny anymore. It’s just cruel.

“—and the investiture of the prince.” The young man stops and stares at Quentin. “No,” he answers slowly. “The _High King_. Our princess-that-was. If you’re not here for—” The friendly expression freezes on his face as he appears to realize that he’s led two complete strangers into his palace without understanding why they’re actually there. “Who are you two?”

“We’re travelers from another land,” Quentin says, trying to reassure the poor boy. “I’ve come to seek an audience with the princess, or rather, the High King, I suppose, about a weapon I’ve heard tell of—”

For some reason, this makes the guard’s eyes go flinty and hard. “As I’ve said, the princess-that-was is now the High King, and she is not accepting any more efforts at her hand in marriage, so I suggest that you go back to your land—”

“Whoa, there,” Nigel interrupts. “He’s not proposing marriage. He just said, he needs to talk to a woman about a weapon.”

“Oh. But. Why are you asking to undertake the sacred royal test if you do not wish to prove yourself worthy of the kingdom’s greatest jewel, and hence the High Kingship?”

“No. Um. Why would I want to be—I would like to borrow the weapon, if I may, because I’m on a quest…”

And Quentin explains, once again, about how he wants to slay the Beast, restore magic to the world, and save his beloved.

The guard’s wide eyes are growing wider as he listens. “That’s so _cool_!” he exclaims. “I mean, romantic! Wow, you’re so heroic. And I mean—”

“Why don’t you just bring us to the High King and her new prince?” Nigel cuts in again, sounding a bit annoyed. He taps his foot impatiently, and between that and his lofty attitude, you really might believe that _he_ was the king of this place, Quentin thinks fondly.

“Oh, yeah, sure, of course,” the young man stutters, obviously intimidated, and leads the way. But then he seems to find his courage to speak in Nigel’s presence again, and continues, “I like your scarf, by the way. I’d like to wear one, but I’m not sure the royal dress code would allow—”

Nigel’s face is getting steadily more irritated, so Quentin takes pity on the sentry, and interrupts. “So, how did the princess end up being king, and choose a new prince? I thought she had to marry because of some archaic laws or something.”

His face lights up. “Oh, now this is a tale for you travelers!” he says. “For many years, our kingdom has been renowned for two great jewels. The first is the weapon you spoke of, which was crafted by dragons in the days of old, and which can only be wielded by a hero of the truest heart and purpose, for everyone knows that dragons are tellers of truth, and set the greatest store by it. The legend goes, the hero who can wield this weapon is the one who lives and breathes the purest and most powerful magic in the world.”

“True love,” Quentin says, with reverence. The witch was right. This has to be what he’s looking for.

“The second jewel was our princess. Beautiful and courageous, sharp and cutting as any diamond, suitors flocked to seek her hand even before her father the king, gods rest his soul, had died, but she refused them all, one by one. When her father grew sick, she took over running the kingdom, but the royal advisers began to worry that all would be lost without a High King, for the oldest laws of the land dictated that only a man could rule. They plotted and cajoled and tried to make her marry, each secretly desirous that she would choose one of them or their sons.”

“Ha!” Nigel says, drawn into the tale despite his apparent disregard of the sentry. “As if she would.”

“Indeed she would not,” continues the young man, beaming. “There were those who called her selfish and headstrong, who tried to incite rebellion among the people, at this lady who dared to stand in defiance of the rules that had been passed down for centuries. But ultimately, she proved far too clever for her advisers. She stood in front of the people and announced that she would marry if it was their will. Such was her love for her kingdom, however, that she would only consent to marry a man who loved its jewels as much as she did, and demonstrated his disinterestedness and truth with a test that no one in the kingdom could deny the value of.”

“That he could wield the dragons’ weapon,” Quentin realizes. It _is_ clever, to play on the kingdom’s obvious pride in this heirloom, and the importance of its tradition, while simultaneously making it impossible for anyone trying to take advantage of her to succeed.

“No one could refute the princess’s declaration that anyone who desired to marry her and become High King should prove the truth of his love for the princess, and his respect for the traditions of the kingdom he would gain. So all her noble suitors were forced to forfeit their suits, or try to wield the weapon. And one by one, they failed.

“Then, one day, an ordinary young man who worked in the palace kitchens dared to step up to the dais and face the trial. However, instead of attempting to pick up the weapon and show its magic, he faced the gathered crowd and asked them if this farce had not gone on long enough. Outraged, the princess was about to have him removed, when he pointed out that while men tried and failed to show themselves worthy of ruling the kingdom, she was already doing it, and was that not the truest test of her capability? She was willing to marry against her own inclination, and was that not the truest proof of her love for her kingdom?”

“Bet the advisers didn’t like that,” Nigel mutters.

“The gathered people could not disagree with the cook’s observations, and slowly but surely, the outcry arose: ‘The princess is our High King!’ And the princess, seeing that one person’s support had turned into the support of almost all, was moved almost to tears, because though she knew her own value, she had almost given up on the truth of it ever being recognized by the kingdom at large. At this, however, she arose and beseeched the court to change the law that was causing all this trouble, and then she would be honored to accept the people’s crown.”

“They should’ve done that from the start,” Quentin says, but he’s uplifted despite himself.

“Perhaps we should have done, because it was a simple solution. But such truths are not always easy to see, or accept, when they change what people have always known to be fact. The people had to watch the advisers reveal their true faces, but once they did, they rose up in defense of their princess, and the riots were such that the noblemen had to concede and change the law.”

“What happened to the man? The cook?” Quentin asks. “Was he really just acting out of common sense, or did he want something, too?”

“He returned to the kitchens. But the newly anointed High King sought him out there, and named him her first adviser, if he would accept, because he had been her first true supporter.”

“And then they fell in love?” Quentin guesses, charmed.

The sentry coughs. “No,” he says, a little deflated, as though this is a sore point in the tale. “There are persistent rumors, but in fact, they became friends, and the High King announced that as the young cook had taken up much of the middle management of the kingdom, which had previously been her job, he should be named an honorary prince. So though they spend much time together, they have their own roles and responsibilities, and each is free to… choose other personal companions, if they wish.” He cheers up a bit as he goes on. “So, you’ve come on an auspicious occasion. Now that the kingdom has settled down after the uproar, we in the palace are celebrating our new king and prince with a gala!”

“Gala,” it turns out, is a somewhat sterilized and elegant word for the spectacle they walk in on. Flickering candles in every free corner of the room and along the walls give the frenetic impression of flashing lights; the music is overwhelmingly rollicking, the ballroom floor crowded, and drinks and conversation and bodies are flowing freely.

“My king! A hero from another land and his companion seek audience, regarding the great weapon of our kingdom,” calls the sentry when he spots the High King. She turns slowly, and Quentin can see at once that neither Nigel nor the young guard have exaggerated their descriptions of her at all. She’s easily the most beautiful woman in the room, but beyond her gorgeous dress and lovely hair framing a lovelier face, dark strands braided intricately and woven under a crown, what strikes him is the glinting intelligence of her doe eyes, and her sweet smile that cuts like the sharpest blade.

“You look surprised, hero,” she says, mockingly innocent in a way that reminds him forcibly of Nigel. “Were you expecting a princess?”

“I told you,” Nigel says to Quentin, in admiration that apparently overwhelms his good sense, since he’s speaking loudly enough to be heard by everyone, “not a woman to be fucked with.”

The High King’s smile softens somehow as she faces him. “Well, _I_ fuck with others, on occasion,” she answers, coy. It’s a devastating look on her.

“I'm sure they ask you nicely, Your Majesty,” Nigel says, bowing low and meeting her false shyness with an exaggerated deference of his own, “and thank you for the privilege,” and she laughs, and Quentin suddenly feels like an outsider in whatever exchange they’re sharing. Nigel was right, he realizes: he had said he felt a kinship with this woman, and it’s a feeling she clearly shares, at first sight. It makes Quentin feel strange, but he can’t put his finger on why. If Nigel finds more friends, and more reasons to believe that good things might still happen to him, it can only be a positive. More people in his corner, maybe even someone to love, who’ll motivate him to try to break his curse.

So it’s a good thing, their immediate connection, Quentin supposes, although whatever he’s feeling is closer to unease than satisfaction. It must be anxiety about this weapon they’re here to acquire, and how so many people have failed before him, he thinks, listening to Nigel tell the High King all about it like they’re old friends.

“And so, my heroic companion here would like to borrow the _other_ jewel of your kingdom, to slay the Beast and save his lady-love,” Nigel winds up his retelling of the quest so far.

“I might even let him borrow a night with _this_ jewel, if he asks politely enough. He’s not _that_ cute, but he does look like he’d beg,” she says, with relish.

Nigel laughs. “You’d eat him alive, my dear,” he says, and how on earth is so familiar with her already? “But anyway, take pity on the boy. He’s in love, of the ‘true’ variety. Some people are boring like that, but far be it for the more interesting of us to stand in their way.”

The High King turns her smile on Quentin, but this time, it’s the kinder one she’s been giving Nigel. “Oh, all right, then, hero. Talk to my prince; he’ll set you up,” she says, like another person might say, “Talk to my assistant.” Then, she adds, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your friend company. Prince!” A man emerges from the crowd, as though he’s been waiting on her summons.

“My king?” he asks, and the High King explains Quentin’s request, and her willingness to grant it.

“Of course,” the prince says, turning to Quentin with a friendly smile and patting his shoulder companionably. “Come along, then.”

With one last look back at Nigel, who just lifts his hands up and gives him a “what are you waiting for?” expression, Quentin follows the prince to a slightly quieter corner of the ballroom, where a few people are sitting at a bar and enjoying drinks and conversation away from the dancers.

The High King must have given some kind of signal, because four guards in identical uniforms approach, one of them carrying a small case. The prince nods at them, and the man carrying the case sets it on the bar in front of them.

“So, check this out,” the prince says, opening it.

Lying on the velvet is a dagger, but cut out of the finest crystal, which explains why it’s known as one of the kingdom’s jewels, Quentin thinks. Its many edges glint and glimmer in the candlelight, but beyond its awesome beauty, the prominent impression it gives off is fragility.

“It’s so delicate,” Quentin says, trying not to sound disappointed.

“Appearances can be deceiving, my dude,” the prince says. “Look at the High King.”

Quentin does. For whatever reason, she and Nigel have settled down on the steps of a dais at the far end of the room, at the top of which the king and prince’s thrones are sitting empty. They’re curled toward each other, completely absorbed in their conversation.

“Well?” prompts the prince, drawing Quentin’s attention back to the dagger.

“Oh. Right. Yeah, so how am I supposed to like, slay the Beast with this?”

The prince laughs. “Come on, you know this one. You heard the story, right?”

“True love?” Quentin says again, but it comes out less certain this time.

The prince doesn’t seem to notice his hesitation. “Got it in one, easy-peasy!” And it is, isn’t it? A weapon powered by true love, to slay the Beast. True love’s kiss, to free his beloved from the Beast’s curse.

The prince waits, gesturing at the open case in invitation, but Quentin doesn’t reach out his hand for the dagger.

“Um. Can I—sorry if this is kind of personal,” Quentin starts. “But how come you never tried to use it?”

The prince scrunches his nose and shrugs. “I’m a cook, not a hero,” he says. “It wouldn’t work for me, obviously.” When Quentin says nothing, waiting for more, he continues, “Besides, I, um. Didn’t want to rule, right? It was just that I was… tired of preparing all these feasts, yeah, whenever random nobles would come to try the weapon out.” His tone is odd, like he’s trying to sound casual, but can’t completely mask an underlying note of anxiety.

“But what I mean is. How’d you know?” Quentin persists. “That it wasn’t true love, for the two of you?” They seem to get along well enough. The prince certainly supports the High King in her endeavors, without trying to take advantage of her to further his own status.

The prince pulls a face, thoughtful and perhaps mildly guilty. “I don’t know, honestly,” he says. “I mean, I’ll admit I thought about it. M—the High King, I mean. Who wouldn’t? She’s gorgeous, and brilliant, and hilarious.” That certainly seems to be true, Quentin thinks, at least based on the way that she has Nigel sitting close and gazing at her, completely smitten, and hanging on her every word. “A little mean, or a lot mean, actually, but she’s got a hell of a good heart and iron everywhere else. So I guess a little part of me did imagine, throw us together enough and… but I think I just got swept up in it, the boxes, right?”

“The boxes?” Quentin asks vaguely, still staring at the High King, now reaching out to take Nigel’s hands, casual as anything.

“The ones the world tries to put you into. Prince and princess, whatever. People who it’ll be neat and tidy to pair up, tie together with a bow and call it ‘true love,’ because what else could it be leading up to? But feelings don’t work like that, do they? I just, what kind of person would I be, if everything I did, being her friend, trying to help, was because I expected her to fall into my arms at the end of it?”

Quentin frowns and looks back at him. The prince gives a self-deprecating sort of chuckle. “So yeah, that’s it. I just realized that whatever I was imagining wasn’t actually what I wanted, and it definitely wasn’t what she wanted. And anyway, I’m more of a go-with-the-flow guy, you know? It’s about the journey, not the destination, and I’m pretty chill with how it’s going. Not everyone’s a true love for the storybooks kind of person, and that’s fine. Maybe it’ll hit me one day, but I honestly don’t think this is it.”

Quentin doesn’t really know what to say to that. He doesn’t understand how someone can be comfortable with that kind of uncertainty. He thinks about Nigel, talking about the princess turned High King before he even met her: “Sometimes you just know, don’t you?”

Quentin knows, doesn’t he? The girl he loves, he loved her before, and he loves her still, and going on this quest to get her back isn’t the same as what the prince is saying, about _expecting_ something from her for his efforts. They already have a pact; they’re already in love. This is just what you have to do, when that’s the case.

As if reading his mind, the prince freezes suddenly, and then smiles a reassuring smile. “Oh, but I’m getting carried away. This isn’t about me. You’re obviously the sort of person who _does_ want it, the truly-madly-deeply connection, the whole shebang, right?”

“True love,” Quentin says, yet again, and this time, he sort of gets the distinction the prince is making. Because yes, he wants the romance. He wants to feel, to _know_ that there’s one person for him, who’ll stand at his side and shore up his tenderest, weakest spots, and who he’ll take care of, whose vulnerabilities he’ll protect, without question, come what may. One person’s breaths to fall asleep to every night, and one person’s smile to wake up to every morning. Someone he can just sit with by the fire on cold nights, tuck his cold feet in between theirs under the blankets, listen to their complaints all the while knowing they’ll never push him away, not for real.

Maybe what the prince is saying is that some people don’t need that, or want it, even; maybe their lives and their selves are whole and contained and satisfied in a way his have never been, or maybe they find their solace in sources apart from other people, or in more than one single person, and that’s fine. But Quentin, with his strange bouts of low spirits and the way he’s always felt apart, like an uninhabitable island, lonely and forgotten and abandoned for more comfortable climes, longs for it, both the sublime and the everyday companionship of it.

He’s had the taste of it, with his beloved, hasn’t he? It feels so long ago that Quentin’s not even sure he remembers what it was like.

“Yes,” he answers belatedly. “I want it.”

“Exactly,” the prince says, wagging a finger at him. “So you’re exactly the type of hero for whom this weapon will be the most effective. Hashtag ‘lover _and_ fighter,’ all in one. Go on, give it a try.”

“All right,” Quentin says, and takes a deep breath. He reaches out his hand and gently works the dagger out of its case.

And then promptly fumbles and almost drops it when he sees the High King kiss Nigel on the mouth out of the corner of his eye.

“Whoa, careful there!” the prince says.

Quentin stabilizes his hold on the dagger, catching his breath. Could it be that Nigel’s cured, that she’s his…

“True love,” he reminds himself, thinking resolutely about his own, and looks at the crystalline weapon in his hand. It’s as fragile as it ever was, and he feels a bit idiotic, staring at it in his own hand and waiting for something to happen.

Nothing happens.

“Right, so,” the prince says, sounding a bit worried and like he’s pretending not to be. “Performance anxiety is a thing, try to relax, this is fine. Let me just talk to the High King when she’s free, and I’m sure we can direct you toward someone who can help with that. Just hang tight, have a few drinks. Barkeep!”

* * *

Nigel tries not to let his gaze linger as the prince ushers Quentin off, presumably to show him this magical weapon that Quentin’s going to light up with his love for… well, the girl he truly loves. He turns back to the High King to find her already staring at him intently.

Before he can say something to diffuse the far too knowing look in her eyes, she says, “I know the burden you carry,” and all of a sudden, she’s Margo, and Eliot’s reaching for her before he can think twice about it.

He probably holds on too tightly, and she says into his chest, “Jesus, what has it, been months for you?” But she’s squeezing back as hard.

Eliot loosens his hold enough so that she can pull back to look up at him. “Yes. It’s been a long few weeks at least. Time is kind of blurry here.” He raises an eyebrow. Like a dream, he doesn’t say.

“But you’re okay,” she prompts carefully, “both of you.”

“We’re okay,” he agrees, but hesitates. He’s trying to hold on to everything that’s happened in the quest so far, so he can relay it to her, and help her best set the stage for the next pitstop, which is Kady.

“Well, while my prince entertains your companion, how about you sit down here and tell me about your travels, stranger,” Margo suggests. He gets it. Josh is making sure Quentin knows how to use the weapon in question; Margo’s here to get updates about their progress.

“Of course,” Eliot says, settling down beside her on the steps. Where to begin, and how can he best word it so as to avoid the dream curse’s attention?

As that thought occurs to him, he realizes that they still don’t fully understand what set off the freak storm in Julia’s episode, although he has an idea. Eliot opens his mouth to tell Margo about it, and then flinches automatically when she unthinkingly takes his gloved hands in hers.

“What?” she asks.

“Oh,” he says to himself, and draws his hands back to show her the gloves. “So, first off, I’m cursed. Anyone who touches my skin will have miscellaneous bad things happen to them, though I’m not sure I remember what.” He tries to recall Nigel’s family, who he lost, and stumbles on the uneasy swooping image of a cottage, a patchwork blanket that ripples like tiles, and a man, and a child, who remind him a lot of…

Fucking subconscious.

“What?” Margo repeats.

“It’s not that important,” he says, but she knows him far better than Julia does, and doesn’t buy it. “So, I have this curse,” he says again, and explains what he knows about the effects, and how they’re contained by the pouch Julia gave him, which in the world of the dream represents whatever mysterious magic the “Fairy Queen” has done.

“So while you wear that, you can touch people,” Margo clarifies.

“Yes. Casually. Not, I think, you know. With _real feeling_. If you know what I mean.”

He waits. Another person might make some kind of comment or judgment about just how much therapy Eliot needs, but this is Margo.

“Take them off,” she says, nodding at the gloves, and he obeys, tucking them into his belt.

She goes to take his hands and he shies back again. “Come on,” she continues. “Whoever’s got that curse, you know—” It’s not Eliot. It shouldn’t affect him, or Margo, if she—she grips his hands tightly, and before he can stop her, she kisses him on the lips, easily, a familiar gesture between friends.

“What’s that for?” Eliot asks, clutching her hands, more desperate for the contact than he’s understood these past few weeks, but also instinctively watching her face for any sign of pain or side effect.

“You are the most tactile fuck I know,” Margo says flatly, and Eliot laughs. “So, touch me while you can.”

Eliot’s filled with love and gratitude for her. He remembers meeting her at Brakebills, how standoffish and perfect she was, and how the first time he dropped a kiss on her head or took her hand to hold as they walked, she was taken aback by it, before learning to lean into the gestures with her peculiar brand of confidence. Margo’s used to holding herself apart, convinced that she had to in order to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, for reasons that he would rather not dwell on, relating to how he grew up, Eliot yearns for the affection of casual touches with a sort of neediness that he’s really quite embarrassed about. He gives them out easily, to all his friends and lovers, but Margo’s the only one who truly understands how much he’s actually doing it for himself, and why. So she indulges him, and lets him under her armor in turn, and it’s always been the two of them against the world, safe and strong together, until…

Oh, until Quentin, who maybe, sometimes, doesn’t seem like he’s just _indulging_ Eliot. When Eliot touches him, he leans into the touch, like a flower turning its face toward the sun, like maybe he needs it as much as Eliot does, and that’s just dangerous, in a way that Margo’s never been.

“Problem,” Margo says, nodding at where Quentin is holding up a crystal knife of some sort. “Looks like our heroic little friend is having some trouble getting it up.”

Sure enough, Quentin’s staring forlornly at the dagger with his cute little dismayed face, like he expects it to do something that it’s clearly not doing.

“How do you know?” Eliot asks anyway. “You don’t know what it’s meant to look like when it’s… fully erect.”

“Come on. Does that little thing look like it’s going to slay a beast?”

“Well, no, but maybe if you really know how to use it.”

“I’m just saying. You’d think there would be more fireworks and swelling music and shit when the hero pulls his phallic weapon out of its sheath. Besides, he’s got that look on his face, like ‘I swear, this has never happened before.’ So either he’s having performance anxiety, or this world’s a—

“Mood killer?” Eliot suggests. It’s not out of the question that the dream curse is altering events, making it difficult or impossible for their plot to proceed as planned. If Quentin shows up at the Castle at the End of the World and fails to kill the Beast or rescue Alice, there’s no way he can walk out the door. But making it so that the weapon they’ve devised is flaccid seems like an odd way of going about it.

“I don’t know,” he says. “The last time this world _destroyed the mood_, it was less subtle, you know?” Like lightning and thunderstorm unsubtle. “Maybe it’s just him. Are we sure that he understands how to make the weapon work?”

Margo rolls her eyes. “Come on. This is Quentin. The most powerful magic in the world, wielded by someone pure of heart? There’s no way he hears that and doesn’t get that this is about true love. This should be cake for his squishy, romantic little heart. So it’s either something external, or we need to like, build up his confidence.”

Well, she’s right that there’s no way Julia’s clue is missing its target, especially after it’s been reinforced by the story of Margo’s princess, and whatever Josh is explaining to Quentin right now. So why isn’t it working?

Before he forgets, though, Eliot has the whole storm thing to bring up.

“Okay, but tabling that for a sec. We have other issues. When we visited the witch who pointed us in your direction, we experienced some dangerous weather conditions, you know?”

“Right,” Margo says, and he can see that Julia’s told her about the unexpected end to the last scene. “Did we ever figure out what precipitated that? So we can predict the weekend forecast?”

This is going to be trickier to explain without saying anything suspicious. Nigel hadn’t grasped what Quentin was talking about when he described his experience in the flower garden, but looking back, Eliot thinks he understands. A man who stole something from the gods, and the punishment for his crime was a woman: Prometheus and Pandora. A monster in a castle that was free to walk out at any time: that one’s a bit more abstract, but it does seem to be hinting at Quentin’s own situation, if you interpret him to be the monster in question. If Julia hadn’t written the script, that means that whatever the flowers had told Quentin had either come from the curse, or from his own mind. And it’s unlikely that Blackspire would give Quentin information about the trap he’s in, right?

“So, we went to the witch’s garden, where the flowers told him stories. But the stories they told were familiar ones. The ones written by sexist fucks,” Eliot says, willing Margo to remember her comment about myths.

“Uh, there are a lot of those,” Margo says after a second, sounding puzzled.

“Yes, but only a handful that are relevant.”

“Oh. Right.”

He nods. “So, I think the flowers told him these sexist stories, and—”

“The censors threw a shit fit, I get it. Too close to a commentary on the current political regime.”

It makes sense. Of course the dream curse would try to prevent its victims from learning anything that might help them understand they’re in a dream, or remind them about going to Blackspire in the first place, like the story of Prometheus and magic.

“But what I’m saying is, aren’t the flowers just actors? How did they know what to say? They’re not responsible for writing the script.”

“And neither was the witch,” Margo says slowly. She looks over at Quentin, putting two and two together. “So, you’re saying that our hero has repressed, internalized sexist stories?”

“Don’t we all,” Eliot says. “But yes.” Quentin had obviously known about the myth of Prometheus going into all of this, and if Julia knew about the Pandora connection off the top of her head, it’s not out of the question that Quentin does too. If a part of his mind has put it together, and has the potential to figure out that he’s trapped in this dream curse…

“And what if, whenever he tries to access that aspect of himself, it risks the integrity of his quest?” Eliot continues. “Undermines the very structure of it, you know what I mean?” They’ve plotted this whole quest out to try to stay under Blackspire’s radar, but if Quentin keeps unconsciously drawing attention to it, and hovering on the cusp of understanding his own predicament, it could destabilize the dream spell, and ruin their chance of saving him.

Margo thinks about it for a minute. “I don’t know. Are you sure we’re not thinking about this backwards? Usually, whenever assholes try to ban books, they’re books worth reading. So if the sky’s literally falling down in response to the stories these flowers are peddling, maybe it’s a sign that he’s going in the right direction. I mean, we’re going through all this trouble to jerk Quentin off,” and her eyes say, _get him out of here_, “but what if he can just use his own hand and do it himself?”

Well, yes, if Quentin becomes aware that he’s trapped, maybe he can free himself. But what if Margo’s wrong, and allowing him to become more aware of the curse will only lead to their eviction, or the loop restarting, or something worse? They shouldn’t risk it.

“Maybe he can get himself off, but everyone knows it’s better with somebody else. We should stick to the path we’re on.”

“Self-love is important,” Margo argues. Then, with more emphasis, she adds, “_Doing it yourself_ can be key to this kind of thing,” which okay, that’s true, heroes do usually have to prove themselves on their own. If Quentin can break the curse of his own volition…

“I don’t know,” Eliot says again. “I say, we keep doing what we’re doing for now, because it’s more likely to end in—” Well, _happy endings_ is a little too on the nose, here. “—orgasms for all.”

Margo concedes the point. “You’re right. But you’ve got to be on your guard. If his mind’s got the urge, it might try to pull this kind of shit again. If it does, maybe you can figure out how it’s working, and if what he’s doing is helping or hurting things.”

“Agreed.” Eliot steals a glance at Quentin and Josh. It seems like Josh has pulled out the drinks, and he looks more than a little frantic that the weapon’s not working the way they expected. Really not good in a crisis, that one, is he? He’s about to suggest that they head over to help, when Margo speaks up again.

“One last thing, _Nigel_. None of that explains why our hero’s been glaring at me like I just pulled out _your_ dick in public,” she says.

“What?”

“And it’s like he doesn’t know whether he should be outraged, or incredibly aroused. Whichever it is, it’s definitely tinged with a little envy-green.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eliot says, rolling his eyes. “He’s probably just confused by the curse. Since I’m so careful about not touching anyone. He’s wondering why you’re special.”

“So, you’re keeping your hands off him.”

“Come on, B—Your Majesty.”

“I’m just saying. He’s cosplaying as the nerdiest, most earnestly heroic version of himself, and you’re you, babe. We both know that you want to snort that shit like unadulterated cocaine and then lick the plate clean.”

That doesn’t even make sense, but she’s not wrong.

Eliot sighs. “I know the way this ends, okay? And we both know, it has to end that way.”

Getting Quentin out of here is the most important thing, and the best chance they have is riding out his and Alice’s true love story. So maybe Nigel’s got a hankering, and Eliot’s got one too, and perhaps he’s not renowned for his impulse control, as evidenced by the entire emotion bottle adultery debacle, but there’s a handy-dandy curse here that’s going to limit the amount of fucking up that Nigel/Eliot can do. It’s going to be fine.

Margo’s looking at him shrewdly. “You know I’m on your side,” she says finally. “But keep it in your fucking pants, okay?”

Eliot snorts. “Not something we have to worry about, here. I’m laced up tighter than a Victorian virgin. Well, High King, shall we go help Quentin rise to the occasion?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time we tag-teamed a shy boy,” Margo answers, reaching for the pouch he wears around his neck. “You comfort him, I’ll put him through his paces. Ready?” she says, but she drops a stone inside and reseals the fastenings before he can say what he’s thinking, which is, “Fuck, I’ll miss you.”

Nigel blinks to find the High King in front of him, waiting expectantly. Oh, right, they’re headed over to rejoin their respective companions. “Shall we?” he asks, and they make their way across the ballroom together.

Quentin’s sitting on a bar stool, drinking sullenly out of an ornate metal cup while the prince chatters reassurances at him.

“My prince,” interrupts the king, and he turns to her in obvious relief.

“My king!” he says. “Thank f—”

“Why don’t we chat over here for a bit? Enjoy some drinks on us, travelers, and await our return,” she says, pulling the prince away.

“So, that’s it,” Nigel says, studying the small crystal knife that’s resting in an open case on the counter. “Pretty.”

“Yeah. Pretty useless. At least in my hands,” Quentin says, staring into the bottom of his drink hazily. He’s a few cups in, apparently.

“Come on, now. Tell me all about it, hero.”

Quentin gets up suddenly, pacing a few steps back and forth before coming to a stop in front of Nigel. “Look, I’m not—I can’t sword fight, okay? I loved magic, but I was never very good at it, not like my beloved was. I’m not—you know, gorgeous and cunning like the High King, or friendly and easygoing like the prince. The one thing I thought I had going for me was that my purpose was true, that my heart was… but what if I can’t do this, complete my quest? What if I’m a fucking fraud?” He meets Nigel’s gaze, and he has the saddest face in the world, all big eyes and damp lashes and despair etched in every beautiful line of it.

Nigel wants to kiss away his frown, and his tears, and hold him close, and say, “Even if every word of that is true, you’ll still have me. Drop the quest, forget the weapon, and let’s just go do something, anything, together, forever.”

But then, Quentin asks, trust and misery in every syllable of every word: “Nigel, what kind of hero am I?” And Nigel remembers himself, and his role in this story.

“How does asking _me_ help?” Nigel asks. “But if you want to know, I think this is the moment in your quest where you figure that out. Are you the kind of hero who lies down at the first sign that something’s not easy?”

“No, but—what do I do? It doesn’t work, and the prince didn’t even know why—”

“The prince has been a prince for all of two seconds. The High King’s grown up with this heirloom, and she might know a bit more about it, don’t you think? Look, they’re discussing it now, and she still thinks you ought to have it, right? Maybe she knows the trick, or can point you in the direction of someone who can help you embrace your power, or whatever. Until then, enjoy the night off. We have a roof over our heads, and food, and more importantly, wine. If all else fails, you go to bed, and you wake up tomorrow, and try again. There’s nothing like cursing the existence of the sun the morning after a few too many drinks to cure whatever else ails you.”

Quentin smiles a little at that. “You’re dry,” he points out.

“I better catch up, then,” Nigel says, signaling the server, and they drink in companionable silence for a few moments.

“She was touching you,” Quentin says out of nowhere. He takes a small sip of his drink, sets it down, glances at Nigel, then off to the side. It’s endearing, Nigel thinks, before he registers the words.

“What?”

Quentin nods down at Nigel’s hands. His gloves are tucked into his belt. Huh, that’s right. The High King had clasped his palms in hers. “Oh. Well, casual touch,” he says, even though he’s somewhat confused by the recollection. “Relatively harmless, as I said, thanks to the Fairy Queen’s gift. But you’re right, I ought to be more—”

“She held your hands practically the whole time you were talking. You _kissed_ her. It didn’t look that casual.”

Nigel’s a little annoyed with his own lack of circumspection, and a bit uncertain about what Quentin is getting it. Strange that he hadn’t thought anything of it when he was with her, the High King. She’d been so compelling, so wickedly lovely. He’d told her about the curse and laughed about it. She’d made him feel safe to be himself.

Of course he shouldn’t have done it, let his guard down even for an instant. That’s how people get hurt. But it makes something churn in his gut to have Quentin judge him for it now, much as he deserves it.

“Okay, I get it, I put her at risk. I shouldn’t have. I’ll—”

He starts putting on his gloves again, but Quentin says, “Wait.”

“What?” Nigel asks, and it comes out more honestly irritated than he would like to reveal. Quentin, on the other hand, no longer looks annoyed so much as chagrined, like a puppy who’s been kicked.

“I’m sorry,” he says, dark eyes sincere, pretty mouth downturned at the corners. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s fine,” Nigel dismisses. “It’s the truth.”

“No, it’s—just wait!” he says again, snatching the gloves out of Nigel’s grasp when he goes to put them off again. It’s such a swift, clean movement from someone who’s normally rather… well, not exactly clumsy or blundering so much as _unconcerned_ with how he moves around, but it makes Nigel think of the moment by the bridge, Quentin’s unexpected dexterity with his hands. The unassuming confidence of it, the lack of hesitation.

“What?” Nigel asks again, and it’s less combative this time. Maybe hinging on a little embarrassingly breathy. He feels naked without his gloves, and peculiar looking at them in Quentin’s hands.

“Just, do you trust me?” Quentin asks, setting the gloves down on the bar top.

Nigel exhales, and finds a normal tone of voice. “You ask me this after everything we’ve been through together? I’m offended. Don’t you know me well enough by now to understand that that is the sort of sentimental drivel question I would never, ever answer?”

“I know you well enough to understand that that’s answer enough,” Quentin replies, and oh, he’s dangerous, with his smile and his surety and that shiny little edge of drunkenness that’s making him bold. “Just, don’t move.”

And then, he grasps Nigel’s upper arms with his hands.

Nigel startles, but doesn’t step back. Quentin’s fingers are clutching at the long sleeves of his overshirt, not his skin, but he can feel their imprint, their steady pressure on his arms.

“You’re safe,” Quentin says, holding fast.

“_You’re_ safe,” Nigel counters, but he hears the uncertainty of his own voice. Quentin slides his hands around Nigel’s elbows, then down his forearms, until he reaches the hemline of his sleeves. “Quentin, stop,” he says, and Quentin does. “What—what are you—”

“I’m not touching you,” Quentin says pointedly, but his thumbs are gently stroking the bones of Nigel’s wrists, carefully over the fabric.

“You’re putting yourself at risk,” Nigel says, trying for firm, but landing somewhere between anguished and desperate. “Why are you…”

“I was watching you with her,” Quentin says. “The High King. I’ve never seen you like that, with your guard down. You’re always so controlled. You’re always so careful not to hurt anyone.” Nigel’s about to protest again, or apologize, or whatever, but then Quentin continues, gently, “It’s not fair. That you have to police yourself so much. That you have to live in fear of being touched.”

Nigel swallows. He feels, horrifyingly, like he wants to cry.

“So, let me,” Quentin says. “I can carry some of it for you, can’t I? I know about the curse. I’ll be careful, so that you can just. Have this much, at least.”

Is it better or worse, having this much and no more? This? This is torture, Nigel thinks, hysterical.

He never wants it to stop.

“Quentin,” he says, and then shuts himself up.

“You’re wearing it, right? The Fairy Queen’s gift?” Quentin asks. He releases Nigel’s wrists and lifts his own arms, as though in surrender, but then reaches his hands up to Nigel’s neck, wrapped around in a soft black scarf.

Quentin unties the scarf. He holds eye contact. Then, he tugs at it deliberately, lets his eyes drop to watch it slide to bare the skin of Nigel’s neck, and the visible lines of the necklace he wears. Nigel feels the soft touch of the fabric and the intentness of Quentin’s gaze, and isn’t sure he knows which sensation is which. Nigel hears the susurrous sound the fabric makes, incongruously distinct over the rushing of his pulse in his ears.

“You’re drunk,” Nigel hears himself say, as though from a distance. And then, closer, “This is dangerous.”

“I thought maybe she’d break it. When she kissed you,” Quentin says, and it takes Nigel a second to figure out what he’s talking about.

“Oh, Quentin,” he says, laughing a little and coming back to himself, on surer ground here. “True love’s kiss? Really? I just met her.”

“But it can happen fast, can’t it? You said you felt like you knew her, and then she was—I mean, she obviously liked you a lot too.”

Nigel considers that point, before making answer lightly. “Well, I won’t deny that I feel a kinship with her. And obviously, I’m mysterious and alluring enough to draw anyone’s attention. But that’s besides the point. That’s just surface. ‘True love’? It’s not for the likes of me. I’m no hero, hero.”

Quentin looks like he’s about to argue, but then his eyes catch on the dagger, and he just says, “Well, as it turns out, you might not be alone in that state,” sounding sullen again. Danger averted.

“Hey, none of that tonight, we agreed, right?”

“Right,” Quentin says, and then jumps when he sees the High King and prince approaching again.

“So, little advertised fact about this jewel,” the High King begins without any preamble. “Truest heart, purest magic, all that jazz, sure. But sometimes, in the history of our kingdom, a hero needed to prove their courage and mettle, to find confidence in their ability to use it.”

“Oh,” Quentin says.

Nigel smiles at the High King gratefully. “See? I told you,” he says.

“So, you don’t think I’m not worthy of it?” Quentin asks. “I know so many people tried and failed. But you don’t think I’m one of them?”

For all that she’s been brusque with him so far, the High King softens at his genuine hesitation. “Honey, you could not be more different than those shitcrisps, just based on the fact that you’re worried that I’m giving it to the wrong person. And I’m not. You want to use this to save the woman you love, and destroy a beast that’s hurting people, and give everyone magic back. You _are_ worthy. It’s just that sometimes the world is shitty and tells you that you have to prove it, and that makes you doubt it.” She touches the crown that graces her head. “People told me that I didn’t deserve this, until I almost believed it myself.” She glances at Nigel. “Luckily, we both have people who believe in us, when it’s tempting to doubt ourselves.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, half-glancing at Nigel as well. “You’re right.”

“I know. I’m always right,” she says, careless as anything. It makes Quentin smile properly, and Nigel actually thinks he could love her at first sight, after all.

“You’ll have plenty of chances to prove your mettle, coming straight up,” the prince says, reminding everyone of his presence. “Your path to the Castle at the End of the World takes you north, and it’s totally harsh that way. The elements, the creatures, the badass bandit-witches who know battle magic...”

“Don’t scare the boy,” chastises the High King. As they’re talking, she and the prince have started to lead the way out of the ballroom, into a long, empty hallway lit by candles along the walls.

“Through this door,” the prince says, stopping at last, “are the guest quarters. Please, get some rest before you set off on the next stage of your journey.”

“But first, the blessing of my house on your quest,” the king adds. Facing them, she does a silent ritual, concentrating hard, gesturing strangely. She looks first at Quentin, and then at Nigel, a serious, intent look, before she speaks her blessing, with gravity. “Go on, you questing fucks, don’t cock it up.”

And so Quentin’s bewildered expression is the last thing Nigel sees before he laughs, and crosses over the threshold.

* * *

Quentin comes back to consciousness slowly, keeping his eyes closed. He’s sleepy and comfortable, whole body wrapped up in something warm and solid. He smiles at the feeling, falling back into a half-doze.

But then, there’s a loud gasp, and he’s shoved rudely into complete wakefulness by a blast of cold air as the blanket is pulled away from his body. “What the fuck?” he mumbles, opening his eyes to see Nigel, who’s standing a few feet away from the bed, eyes wide and horrified. “Nigel? What—?”

“You—you—are you—?” Nigel stutters. He’s clutching a hand to his face and then neck, scanning himself for… skin, Quentin realizes. Bare skin. Nigel’s still in his full sleeves and trousers and socks, but the long, elegant line of his neck is barer than Quentin has ever seen it, without a high collar or a scarf to hide the necklace he wears. He fumbles on the bedside table for his gloves, shoves his hands into them without looking.

Oh, Quentin thinks, remembering. He’d hovered on the edge of touching those hands, last night. He’s the one who’d bared that neck. Without the scarf, Nigel looks oddly vulnerable, the faintest line of his clavicles just visible under his tunic, and the little dip of fabric where Quentin can imagine the notch above his sternum lies.

He’s confused, and cold, but he’s also hot all over, all of a sudden. Besides that, he remembers his failure to wield the dragons’ weapon, and thinks about his beloved, the girl he’s set out to save, and feels a sinking sensation of guilt and worthlessness. And then, Nigel’s standing there worried that…

“I’m okay,” Quentin says gently, prioritizing. “You didn’t hurt me.”

Nigel’s holding the pouch around his neck tightly. “I’m so sorry,” he breathes. “We were drinking, I’m usually so careful, but I—I _forgot_. I can’t believe…”

“Nigel, I’m fine. And I’m sorry,” Quentin says, sitting up and trying to meet his friend’s eyes. In the light of day, without the wine-induced haziness and the sight of Nigel and the High King together to spur him on, Quentin’s spontaneous plan to help with Nigel’s curse looks a lot more unacceptable. He must have been drunker than he realized; he doesn’t even remember getting into bed, let alone sharing one with Nigel.

“You’re sorry? For what?”

“It’s not your fault. I pushed you. I just wanted to help, but if I made you feel worse, or more worried—last night—if anything I did, or said—your trust means a great deal to me. I always want to live up to it, and I’m afraid that I disappointed you.”

Add Nigel to the long list of people in Quentin’s life who he’s disappointed, he supposes.

“Don’t be silly,” Nigel says after a second, with a laugh. He’s still a little shaky, but growing steadier by the minute. He finds his scarf, winding it around his neck securely.

“I just. I felt like I couldn’t do much about the weapon, or the quest, you know? But you’re here, and you’ve been doing so much for me, and I wanted to help you, if I could.”

Nigel huffs out a sigh. “Listen, I get it. You were having your moment of doubt, that’s all. You would hardly be a hero worth your song if you didn’t have that.”

“What?”

“Last night. You thought you wouldn’t be able to wield the weapon. You thought you might not complete the quest.” He’s abruptly in a good mood, seemingly; light and mocking and kind. But he grows more serious as he continues. “But listen to me. I know what you are; I’ve known it since you tried to save my life in Chatwin’s Torrent without a second thought. You are not a person who gives up. You are not someone who could leave anyone, let alone the girl you love, to be consumed by the Beast.”

Oh. Right. Quentin is on a quest to save his beloved. To destroy the Beast. To restore magic to the world. He has a weapon in his knapsack that’s utterly useless unless he is fully devoted to her, and believes in the sanctity of his task.

He does. He does, right? What has all this been leading up to, the entire arc of his story so far, except for that?

He tries to imagine the ending, once everything’s done, the way he used to do when he first met her, and after she fell asleep, he would close his eyes and dream about it, about having her by his side forever. Settling down with her back in their village, returning to their life together after the quest.

But now, he comes up against a curious thought. They’ve never actually lived together, without a quest. They met each other when she was determined to find her brother, nothing else, and he was a lost young man in search of a purpose, and overjoyed to seize upon hers, to find meaning and value in it. The path they walked, lined as it was with anxiety and grief and loneliness, drew them together. They shared comfort; they fell in love.

But then, the next quest, to defeat the Beast. And now, this one, to get her back. It’s the last one, Quentin thinks, trying to feel reassured instead of anxious. And then they’ll really get to be together, forever. Be who they are together, without a quest to bind them.

He reaches for the image of their quiet future in the village, but the picture’s vague. Lines without any of the details filled in. Had it always been like that?

When he looks up, Nigel’s still talking. “And I get it. My little curse conundrum makes for a compelling distraction, but you know it’s not the problem you’re setting out to solve. I know it’s hard for someone like you to accept, but there are some things you can’t mend.”

That brings Quentin back to himself. For some reason, Nigel’s resignation about the curse makes him upset again, instead of apologetic, even if he _had_ overstepped last night. “I want to help you,” he repeats, stubbornly. “Just because the same Fairy Queen who cursed you also told you there was nothing more to be done doesn’t mean that—I still think you’re being stupid about this, Nigel.”

Nigel groans, covering his face with his gloved hands, and then sighs again, changeable as always. “I know you do. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t, hero. But if you can’t let it drop, at least put it aside for now, okay? Trust me, my curse will keep. Let’s save our overthinking for the quest we’re actually on, hmm?"

And okay, maybe Quentin still feels a little niggling sensation of unease about… well, everything, but faced with Nigel’s rational, “You know I’m making sense” tone alongside his sincere, pleading eyes, what can he say to that?

* * *

**v. The Robber Hedge-Witch **

So, everything’s fine.

They’ve reached a bit of an impasse regarding Nigel’s curse, given that Quentin’s decided that he’s not going to give up on finding a solution, and Nigel continues to alternate between recalcitrant and nonchalant, both of which are frustratingly unhelpful. At first, Quentin tries to be subtle when he brings it up again, circling around the topic under the pretense of wanting to learn more about Fae magic, but Nigel just gives him a look like one might give a toddler who thinks they’re being subtle about sneaking cookies, but in fact has crumbs all over their face. An indulgent, “aren’t you adorable?” kind of expression, but one step away from “you’re in so much trouble.”

And when Quentin drops the act and tries to re-engage him in an actual discussion about it, pointing out that simply _talking_ about this won’t detract from their current quest, Nigel becomes selectively deaf to any queries on the subject.

Nigel’s really pretty annoying sometimes.

Anyway, they wrap themselves in the cloaks and furs that have been left for them in the guest quarters, and set out from the palace. The building is empty and silent, no evidence of the previous night’s revelry, like the entire court has packed up and left. Quentin and Nigel don’t go back into the ballroom, but exit through a small side door in the hallway which they had probably been too tipsy to notice before, which opens on to the path leading north.

As the prince had warned, the landscape grows harsher as they make their way onward. Trees become sparse, only the hardiest of winter shrubs surviving the deepening cold. It’s not snowing yet, but Quentin wakes up one morning to find the ground frosted over, and knows it’s only a matter of time.

Something of the barrenness and the chill creeps into his heart. It reminds him of the eerie, canopied desolation of the forest when he first set out from the centaurs’ sanctuary, or the dark, isolated villages and fields they’d passed through on their way to the Bridge of Flowers. Long stretches of the cold, empty darkness this world seems to be made of, the way it seems to reflect how Quentin is feeling on the inside, too.

There had been intervening bright spots back then, of course. The sunlight reflecting off the waters of Chatwin’s Torrent, reminding him that magic still existed in the world. Meeting Nigel, and remembering how much any situation could be improved by a companion to share the experience.

Now, however, the bright spots are harder to find, or else they’re becoming fewer and far between. Nigel is still by his side, but despite his efforts to hide it, something is clearly eating at him. Gone are the songs and the laughter, replaced by long periods of contemplative silence. He still buckles down at the work, building fires and foraging for provisions, but they go relatively hungry more often than not, and the nights are bitingly cold no matter what. Nigel smiles when Quentin talks or teases, striving for their old camaraderie, but it’s something remote and withdrawn, and his answers are short and to the point. And when they put down their bedrolls for the night, he always makes sure to place his carefully on the opposite side of the fire from Quentin’s, leaving his gloves on as he says good night.

So it goes for several days. And then, one morning, Quentin discovers he has a pebble in his shoe.

He’s not sure when he picks it up, but what starts as a mildly uncomfortable sensation starts nagging and poking at him until it’s all he can think of. Eventually, he has to stop, hopping awkwardly on his other foot while he yanks off his boot.

“What the fuck,” Nigel says, the most he’s said all day.

“I have a fucking _pebble in my shoe_,” Quentin says. But when he turns out his boot, there’s nothing there. And then of course he stumbles and touches his socked foot down into a half-frosted puddle, and now he has a wet sock, and he’s freezing, and he puts his boot back on, and there’s still a pebble in his shoe.

Nigel watches this entire exercise in bemused silence, and then starts along the path again.

Quentin stops complaining. Obviously Nigel doesn’t care. He didn’t want to come along on this quest anyway. He’d probably just been bored, or worse, he’d seen how pathetic and useless Quentin was on his own, and offered to help out of pity. He’s probably been trying to get out of it since the Drowned Garden, and is just unsure how to escape Quentin’s clingy neediness. Maybe before that, when he met that knight on the Bridge of Flowers. Definitely since he met and bonded with the High King.

With every step, the pebble gets sharper, like it’s made of glass.

Unlike Nigel, who’s gone quiet and retreated into himself in face of whatever’s been disturbing him, but overall, has remained calm and polite, Quentin grows increasingly, wildly irritable. At first, he stews in silence too, but eventually, his frayed temper bursts out of him, and he starts talking, without any concern for politeness.

It’s too cold. They’re lost, they don’t know where they’re headed; couldn’t the prince and the king have given them clearer directions? Perhaps, in all the time he was making eyes at her, Nigel might have had some useful conversations about the terrain? No? Oh, wait, Nigel’s not much of a conversationalist anymore, is he? He’s just around to collect wood and build fires, and even those give out before the end of the night, so what good is he, really?

Quentin can’t stop talking. He hears the repetitive inanity of what he’s saying, the useless complaining and unfair blaming, but all he can think about is the pebble in his shoe, and the fact that he’s set off on this quest and he’s doomed to fail, carrying a weapon he can’t use, going on about how he’s going to defeat the Beast and save the girl when they don’t even…

He cuts off that thought, and returns to Nigel. Nigel, whose refusal to react to Quentin’s steady stream of pettiness and vitriol is the most annoying thing of all.

Finally, however, as they stop walking to make camp for the night, Nigel gives him a reaction. “Quentin,” he snaps, at whatever nitpicking Quentin’s doing about the site Nigel’s chosen, and then pauses for a calming breath. “Look. I get that this is hard. And I’m here for you. But it’s hard for me too, okay? So can you just, like, not? Or like, hit pause and resume tomorrow?” He sounds weary, and sad.

Now that he’s gotten a reaction, Quentin feels terrible about it, of course. He’s being irrational, he knows that. He should apologize, and set up his bedroll, and get some rest so he feels better in the morning.

“Well, I didn’t _ask_ you to come along,” Quentin says instead, and hears how nasty his own voice sounds in a kind of detached horror.

That’s it, says a voice in his head. Now you’ve done it. Nigel’s going to turn around and walk away, go back and join the High King’s court, or all the way back to Chatwin’s Torrent, and then what will you do, you utterly useless fuck?

Nigel looks at him for a moment, and there’s something in his eyes that could be the hurt Quentin was trying to inflict, but he shutters them too quickly to be sure. Then he gets back to trying to spark a fire. “Can you find dry kindling?” he asks, neutrally, not looking up from his work again.

The part of Quentin that’s picking at anything and everything and itching for a fight wants to rage and scream and disrupt that hateful calm, but the other part, the tiny part that’s living in fear of the instant he’s horrible and miserable enough to disgust his only friend in the world, keeps him quiet. He feels like he’s vibrating with pent-up _something_, just an overflow of emotion, as he walks around the frozen wasteland, trying to find twigs and shrubs that look promising rather than damp or frosted over.

By the time he’s collected enough, Nigel’s managed to get a small blaze going, and is trying to shelter it from the rising wind. Quentin comes up beside him, holding out the dry bits of wood like an offering.

“Kindling,” he manages, and nothing else follows.

Nigel glances at him sideways. “Thanks,” he says, and somehow, Quentin knows that his subpar apology’s been accepted.

Oddly enough, that’s what pulls him out of the dark and twisted ravine into which his spirits have sunk, at least a bit. Nigel shouldn’t accept his apology that easily. Nigel needs to think more of himself; he deserves for Quentin to tell him how much he’s appreciated and needed on this quest.

“Nigel,” he starts, “I shouldn’t have—”

Someone whistles. They both look up, startled. “Well, I’m impressed. You actually got a fire going, not easy to do, not at all.” A woman, sprightly and attractive, has emerged from the fog. Her long, bright hair, vibrantly red like poppies, stands out against the blank whiteness of the world. She grins at them cheerfully. “It’ll blow out soon enough, though. They always do, here.” 

“Where, exactly, is here?” Quentin asks.

“You must be travelers,” she says. “It’s easy to get turned around. But you’re standing on the border of the Plains of Truth.” She gestures behind her, where the fog is so thick that it’s opaque. “More of a tundra, really. Isn’t that what you call it when the subsoil layer is frozen beneath? But ‘Tundra of Truth’ sounds a bit twee. Too much alliteration.”

“Well, ‘Plains of Truth’ sounds like a pun, like, ‘the truth, plain and simple,’” Quentin argues.

Nigel sighs loudly. The woman’s smile widens. “I like you,” she says. “I’ve got a tent if you want to keep warm with me instead of going off to wherever you’re going.” She winks at Quentin. It takes him a second to understand her proposition.

“Uh, I can’t,” he says. “It would be…”

Disloyal? asks the voice in his head. To whom, your _beloved_? Like the way you were clinging to Nigel’s clothes in the palace and wishing you were touching his skin instead wasn’t? Why not just take what she’s offering? Does anyone actually believe that you’re going to get to the end of this quest, anyway?

“I don’t want that,” Quentin says, more firmly, over the litany of guilt and shame that’s rising up in him like a wave of nausea, and the woman shrugs.

“Well, it could be a fun time, but if you’re sure,” she says.

“He just said,” interjects Nigel, but the woman pays him no mind.

“I’m on a quest,” Quentin says. “We’d better be getting on.” He clutches at his knapsack like he’s about to go now, because something in him is whispering a warning about this woman and this place. Without a word, Nigel gathers up his things too, even though they had been about to stop for the evening.

“Simple as that? No lingering doubts, no problems whatsoever? No questions you’d like the answers to?” she asks.

“Um,” Quentin stutters, thinking about the weapon in his knapsack that he doesn’t know how to activate. Trying hard not to think about any other doubts regarding the integrity of his quest that might have arisen since the night he got said weapon. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought so,” the woman says, with a knowing smirk. “People don’t usually find us unless they need us. Or well, we find them, I should say. You’ve got a stone, haven’t you?”

“What?”

“Quentin,” Nigel says, sounding uneasy, “we should just—”

“Pebble in your shoe, maybe? Picked it up along the way, but can’t find the little bugger?”

“How did you—”

“Try now,” she says, and sure enough, when Quentin pulls off his boot and tips it over into his hand, out tumbles a sharp, shiny, irregular piece of what looks like obsidian.

“It’s so shiny,” Quentin says, and it is. The deepest black, but reflective, it draws the eyes. It’s dark and consuming and he could lose himself in it. “What is it?” he asks, without looking up.

“A mirror stone,” she replies. “It’s the bedrock of this whole place, under the surface,” she says, gesturing into the fog again, “but if a piece of it finds you, it means you’ve been marked as worthy by the dragon.”

“Uh, pass,” Nigel says. “We did not come this far to be food for a flame-breathing ancient creature. No disrespect intended.”

“No,” Quentin says slowly, “you mean, worthy of the dragon’s help, don’t you? Dragons are the greatest tellers of truths.” And the creators of the weapon he carries. Who better to ask how to use it?

“Bingo!” the woman says. “And lucky for you, a dragon dwells at the far end of the Plains of Truth. All you have to do is bring her the mirror stone as a token, and she’ll give you a truth in return.”

“And that truth is the last thing you hear before she eats you?” Nigel asks skeptically. “What’s the catch?” He turns to Quentin. “Don’t you think this is a little too convenient?”

“I need someone who can help me understand how to use the weapon. This is lucky. If I can literally go to the source and get the truth,” Quentin says.

“No catch, just the truth,” the woman agrees, and her smile is so ingenuous, it’s sinister, somehow. “But I mean, the truth isn’t always something you’re ready to face, or hear, is it? It’s not always easy to put down those rosy spectacles, and see the world as it is. Selfishness. Injustice. Unhappiness. Bad things happening to good people. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“That’s not—” Quentin starts instinctively, but he realizes he can’t find an argument to refute her, not with the cold air weighing down on him, not with the thick unnatural fog lying ahead, the way his spirits have felt dark and low of late. Something in him disagrees with her, violently, but it’s a small, muffled, trapped thing, insignificant in this vast landscape. Bad things _have_ happened to him, to the girl he loves, to Nigel, to the world at large.

She smiles at him knowingly. It’s still extremely disconcerting. “But it’s one of the trials of being a hero, learning to see reality. That is what you’re trying to be, right?”

“Right,” he answers. That’s right. He’s trying to save magic, and defeat the Beast, and save his beloved.

The familiar mantra feels hollow and distant. Is that really what he’s trying to do? Is it really possible?

“You’re feeling its effects already, aren’t you? Seeing the truth of yourself, and the world, and the people in it.”

“That’s—that’s what this is?” Quentin asks. “This voice?”

“Since honesty is our policy here, let me give you the facts. One truth for another, that’s the deal. The mirror stone reflects reality, and it can give you an answer to your question.” She shrugs again. “But if it’s not the answer you want, then you can carry the stone all the way across the plain, and leave it with the dragon. In return, _she’ll_ answer your question with another truth, and let you pass.”

“So if you don’t let go of the stone, she won’t let you pass?” Nigel persists, even though the woman is resolutely focusing on Quentin.

“Oh, she will,” she says easily. “She just won’t give you another truth in its place. Truth is the treasure that dragons hoard; they’re very exacting about the price. You might not want to leave, though! Most of us who hold on to our stones end up sticking around. Disciples of the dragon, guardians of the Plains. When you look in the mirror stone, after all, you might find that the quest you’re on doesn’t mean what you think it means, and choose to stay.”

“What does that mean?” Nigel interrupts, sounding displeased.

“Just that. Now, Quentin, will you face the truth?”

“Quentin, this isn’t a good idea,” Nigel says. “Something is seriously wrong here.”

Quentin doesn’t look up from the mirror stone in his palm. “The weapon can only be wielded by a hero of the truest heart,” he says. “I have to do this. If I can’t face the truth, then…” What’s the point? If he’s just been lying to himself about who he is, and what he’s capable of, and what this quest is actually about, then it’s better to know now, isn’t it? Quit before he goes any further?

“You’re not acting like—I really don’t think—”

“I’m not asking you to come along,” Quentin says again, and walks into the fog.

“Fuck this,” he hears Nigel say, and there are footsteps behind him.

“Only those who carry a mirror stone can pass across the other border of the Plains!” calls the woman, sing-song.

“Well, I don’t give a fuck. I’m not letting him walk into your trap alone.”

Quentin walks slowly, still gazing into the depths of the stone. He means to ask about the dagger he’s carrying, but instead, the question that floats to the forefront of his mind is the same one he’d asked in the Drowned Garden.

“What is the truth of your quest?” repeats a voice, mockingly. “The truth is, you already know the answer, but you’re too much of a coward to look at it straight.”

From far away, Quentin hears Nigel, sounding worried. “Quentin, who are you talking to?” But Quentin doesn’t look away from the dark sheen of the mirror stone, heedless of the way he’s stumbling a little as he walks.

“The truth is, you should’ve stayed down that day when you fell to the ground like the useless lump you are. All this is just dragging out the inevitable. At least your death would have been an honorable sacrifice, in battle. If you fail now, then what’s been the point of your life? What kind of songs are they going to sing about you, the boy who thought he could, and then he couldn’t?”

“Quentin, what the fuck,” Nigel says. “I think you should stop looking at that—it’s obviously working some magic on you.”

“You’re going to _defeat the Beast_?” sneers the voice. “You know what happened to him. You’re going to _save your beloved_? You remember what happened to her, too.”

“No,” Quentin says, because he doesn’t remember that, he doesn’t want to remember that. The only thing that had kept him from giving up that day was the belief that there was something he could do, something worth saving, and the memory is buried too painfully deep to unearth without resistance. Something tugs and pulls at him, agonizing, drawing the images to the surface of his mind, enjoying his misery, until it lets them swirl away.

“You could, I suppose, still save magic,” the voice muses then, more gently, like it’s trying to persuade him. “But I doubt it. Would you have the courage, if the price was your life?”

“It’s not _worth_ it if the price is your life!” Nigel exclaims, but Quentin’s barely listening. He registers vaguely he’s stopped walking, absorbed as he is in staring at the dark mirror stone in his palm. “Sacrificing yourself needlessly isn’t the way to give your life meaning. It’s just a way to get dead!”

“What else in the name of all the gods could possibly give _your_ life meaning?” asks the voice, losing any semblance of gentleness again. “Can’t do magic. Can’t fight. Can’t even find your way without begging some random stranger you just met for help. Needy, weak, useless. _True of heart_? You’re a spineless liar. You know that’s why the weapon isn’t working for you.”

At this moment, Quentin sees hands reaching into his field of vision through the fog. Gloved hands. Nigel, trying to snatch the mirror stone from him. But his hands are hovering hesitantly a few inches away, afraid to get too close.

“What are you going to do, _touch me_?” And oh, Quentin hears it now, as though from a distance. The cruel, mocking voice, now turned on Nigel, is coming from him.

“Quentin,” Nigel says, and stops, hands still frozen in mid-air.

“What would you know about having a meaningful life? You? Like you’re a shining example of a functional person. Lying there in waters that can’t heal you because you’re too broken. Tagging along on my quest because you have no one else who wants you there, nothing better to do besides drown yourself in your own boredom. Why the fuck would I listen to you?”

Whatever’s taken root in Quentin, consumed all his soft weakness and left behind this cruel, twisted, hungry creature, waits raptly for Nigel’s reaction. Tears. Betrayal. Outrage. He wants to hurt him, rip him open, and feast on the triumph of it: despair, perpetuated. He flicks his eyes up from the mirror stone, just for a second, to watch.

But Nigel disappoints. He presses his lips together tightly, and then when he speaks, it’s infuriatingly neutral. “Do you honestly think that anything you’re saying to me is worse than what I say to myself every day?” He laughs once, harshly. “You’d need more creativity than that.”

“I mean, wouldn’t it have been better if you had never gotten up from the ground, either? Died guilty, just deserts for killing your own brother? Or wasted away in your grief after losing your family to your own weakness?” Quentin asks, rising to the challenge. From somewhere outside himself, he can see the cruelty, knows it’s too much, but he’s helpless to stop it from spewing out. He doesn’t want to, in fact. He _feels_ cruel. “Wouldn’t it have made for a neater end, a better story? What is the point of enduring in this messy, aimless aftermath you’re suffering through? Even on this quest, you had another chance. Sacrifice could have been your redemption, for the thoughtless, selfish, purposeless life you’ve led. If you’d died for me, fighting that knight by the Bridge of Flowers—”

But here, Quentin’s mind stutters and halts. Because that’s not right, is it? They’d talked about it before, about stories and truths and meanings, and hadn’t Quentin realized that… yes, sacrifice can be a poignant and meaningful device in theory, but all that had ceased to matter when he had come up against the specter of Nigel’s death.

Why is he saying these things? He doesn’t believe them, does he?

In response to this smallest hint of dissent, swift as the wind, whatever’s driving Quentin’s voice right now switches tack. “The princess you’re so enamored of… wouldn’t it have been the truest demonstration of her devotion if she had sacrificed her own happiness and married for the sake of her kingdom? Maybe she would’ve suffered in her box, but her suffering would be selfless, and meaningful!” There would be peace in it, the nobility and the resignation and above all, the finality of it. Sacrifice is an end to the uncertainty, a simple answer to the question of what it’s all been for, this awful thing called life.

“That’s absurd,” Nigel says. “She didn’t have to suffer! She found another way, without giving up on everything she is, just because the world wanted to define her existence based on the man at her side!”

Quentin scoffs. Of course Nigel would defend her, when he can’t be bothered to defend himself. But before he can say something to that effect, Nigel cuts him off. “And I would have died for you, by that bridge,” he says, and it’s not dramatic at all, like you might expect from Nigel. He says it like he’s speaking the baldest and most unremarkable of facts, and for some reason, that cuts the strings of Quentin’s viciousness again. “But I didn’t have to. Because _you_ found another way, remember?”

“I—I—”

Nigel takes advantage of his hesitation to press on. “Whatever that stone is showing you, Quentin, it’s not the truth.” At the sound Quentin makes, Nigel holds up a hand. At some point, he’s come to stand directly in front of him. “Or, I don’t know. Maybe it’s part of the truth, or one twisted way of looking at it. And fuck, everyone sees the world like that, sometimes. Sometimes it’s even as bad as you’re saying; some things are shitty, and awful, and we can’t change them, and that’s fact, I get it better than anyone. So yeah, if someone shoots an arrow out of nowhere, and the only thing you can do in your final seconds is step in front of it to save someone else… but it’s the last resort, isn’t it? The sacrifice itself isn’t the point.”

That’s right, says the little rebellious voice inside of Quentin, growing stronger. It’s the choice that matters. Sure, if you’re caught in some horrific scenario where death is the only possible outcome, then maybe the way you choose to meet that fate is meaningful. But if you have a choice, if there’s another way…

It’s a messier story to tell. It’s the longer way around. It hurts, and it takes more work. But it takes you somewhere you’ll never get if you just lie down and accept the worst version of the truth. If you just stop telling the story.

Nigel takes a shuddering breath, like he’s holding back tears. Why is he about to cry? “Quentin, you’ve stopped,” he says, and Quentin realizes he’s still been speaking aloud. “Look around. You’re not making progress across this plain anymore. I think that’s the catch of the mirror stone, to keep you here, keep you from completing your quest.”

It’s true. They’re standing still. Quentin no longer knows which direction he was heading. He’s lost in the fog.

He breathes fast. He tries to lift his eyes from the stone, but it’s too difficult.

“You’re right,” Nigel says, apropos of nothing. “I was drowning. Or drifting. Maybe I hadn’t killed myself yet, but I didn’t want to live. The fact was, I was cursed, and nothing could fix it, and nothing else could ever mean anything, so what was the point of trying? I stopped, too.”

“Yeah? And what, you’re telling me it gets better?” Quentin asks, but his voice doesn’t come out cruel and sharp so much as dull and cracked. It’s so much effort.

Nigel laughs. “Me? No. I’m saying, you told _me_ that. I met you, and you roped me into this, and every time I fucking look at you, I think, fuck, there’s someone out there who’s still trying. Life’s fucked him over just as much as it’s fucked me, and he’s still… and maybe it’s all as futile as I thought, but maybe it it’s not. Maybe the truth is, it never could be futile, not while he believes in it.”

“No,” Quentin says, but he’s shaking. His voice is trembling. He stares into the inky blackness of the mirror stone. “The truth is, I can’t defeat this. I can’t do this. The fact is, I’m failing. I’m not… everything else is just a story I’m telling myself, isn’t it? _You_ were right.”

“Quentin,” Nigel says, yet again, and suddenly there are hands on his face, forcing his gaze upward.

The shock of it arrests Quentin for a split second. He’s wearing gloves, of course, but it’s the first time, he thinks, that Nigel has ever reached out to him, apart from pulling him across the threshold in the witch’s house to save his life.

Is it his life that’s in danger now?

Nigel holds his face, and when Quentin manages to meet his eyes, he holds his gaze as well. “Don’t look at the stone,” Nigel says. His eyes are big and deep and earnest, and somewhere in the depths of his pupils Quentin imagines he can see his own visage. “Look at me.”

Quentin can’t look away. Nigel seems to know it, because he drops his hands from Quentin’s face and takes his hands instead. He tries to shrug, but even he can’t pull off carefree and unconcerned when he’s squeezing Quentin’s hands, desperation undercutting his would-be nonchalant tone.

“All right, say it’s a story you’re telling yourself. So, make it a good story. If it’s all fiction, why not choose happiness?”

“Nigel. That’s not—you don’t believe that.” It’s a lie, Quentin thinks, it has to be. A kind one, maybe, but Nigel doesn’t actually live by the words he’s speaking.

“Forget about me. I’m saying, I see you. Someone who set off to save the world from a beast, not because of any personal gain, but because he wanted to protect others. Someone good and brave and true.”

Some of the ice that’s settled around Quentin’s heart, the numbness and the sheer despair, cracks, or melts a little. He keeps looking into Nigel’s eyes, but there’s no hint of a lie.

“I see someone who lived through the worst day of his life, and lay down, and thought he would die, but then got up, and kept going anyway. Someone strong, and resilient.” As he’s talking Nigel has taken one tiny step backwards, and Quentin takes a step forward to match him, almost not noticing that he’s doing it.

“I almost didn’t,” Quentin protests. “I was too weak. If it hadn’t been for the centaurs, and then—”

“You’re here, Quentin. You’ve come this far. Just because someone helped you doesn’t mean you haven’t done it yourself.” He clears his throat showily. They take another step together, facing each other, Nigel still walking backwards with characteristic grace, Quentin toward him, drawn forward by a gravitational pull. Longer steps now, faster. “You’re capable. The way you outwitted those knights on the bridge… you’re clever and quick and _funny_. The way…” He takes a breath, and Quentin realizes they’ve walked a long way across the plain. He can see, a little ways ahead, that the fog is beginning to thin. “The way you’ve tried to figure out my curse, push me, find a solution. Because you’re kind, and you genuinely care, even for a random stranger you found floating in a spring a few weeks ago.”

“You’re not a stranger,” Quentin says, and even though tears are blurring his eyes now, Nigel’s face is still clear in front of him, the clearest thing he’s ever seen. “You’re my friend.” The obsidian in his palm, clutched tightly between his and Nigel’s hands, burns like ice. It hurts, but more than that, it draws attention, insistent.

“So trust me. Don’t look at it,” Nigel says, like he knows what the stone is trying to do. “Don’t look down. Look at me,” and then, stepping a little aside, letting go of Quentin’s hands, “look forward. You’ve made it across the plain.”

Indeed, they’re standing a few feet away from a strange delineation of air, all behind them shrouded in fog, but the land ahead clear of it.

Nigel’s helped him all this way, Quentin thinks, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t done it himself. He swallows around his dry throat, and lifts his chin, face into the bracing wind. He summons up his courage, such as it is; he calls on whatever it is within him that’s carried him this far, refused to let him lie down and give up, and wills it to carry him just a few steps further.

As he steps forward, he sees the dragon.

“Will you leave me your mirror stone?” she asks, staring intently at Quentin’s fist, which he’s instinctively closed around the stone, now that Nigel’s no longer holding that hand. He doesn’t look down.

“I will leave it with you,” Quentin says, putting it down on the ground in front of her.

“I owe you a truth,” she says, “and then you are free to pass beyond the plains. But only one of you carried a stone.” She glances at Nigel. “The other must return.”

“No,” Quentin says. He’s come forward to address the dragon, but at this, he steps back and grabs one of Nigel’s gloved hands again. Nigel twitches, but doesn’t pull away.

“The price of passage across this place was conveyed to you, and to your companion. He chose to follow, in full possession of the knowledge that he could go this far, and no further.”

“She’s right,” Nigel says.

“No,” Quentin repeats. And then, seizing on a wisp of a thought: “Keep your truth, then.”

The dragon just regards him silently.

“Your disciple said, one truth for another,” Quentin says, working it out as he goes. “I’ve carried the mirror stone and set its truth down at your feet. I’ll leave with my friend. He’s my mirror. I look at him, and he shows me the truth of who I am.”

As he says it, Quentin realizes that it’s true. If the mirror stone had shown him one face of the truth, Nigel’s held up another, less bitter, more beautiful. The person that Nigel had described… Quentin doesn’t know if he can see himself like that, but if he has a choice of which one he wants to be, which story he’s going to believe… well, he has to try, doesn’t he? It’s worth it, the life he’ll lead just trying to live up to Nigel’s extraordinary belief in him.

“Are you certain?” the dragon asks.

“Hero,” Nigel starts, and Quentin’s never been happier to hear that stupid nickname in his life, “you need to figure out how to use the dragons’ weapon to finish this thing. I’m not going to be much help with—”

“I’m sure,” Quentin says.

“Curious. How someone with such a heart can yet be such a fool.”

“Listen. I’ve brought you your stone, and I’m going now, with my friend. There’s no call for insults, okay?”

He hears Nigel laugh in disbelief. All right, maybe Quentin is being a little snippy with a motherfucking dragon. But seriously. He’s been through a lot. He’s feeling raw, and ashamed, and embarrassed at how he’s spoken and behaved, but below all that surface discomfort, there’s something grateful and steady and fond going all the way down to the bone, sheer awe at Nigel’s everything. Oh, Nigel’s never going to let him live this down, is he? He can hear it now: “What kind of hero _are_ you?”

Or more likely, Nigel’s never going to bring it up again, effortlessly, selflessly kind and forgiving like it’s no big deal. Quentin honestly doesn’t know which is worse. He’s just the worst, Nigel is. But there’s no way that Quentin’s leaving him here. It’s inconceivable.

“Do you have any idea how few people set down the stone?” the dragon asks, interrupting this train of thought. “Many never make it across the plain. Those who do cannot stop staring into its depths, until its blackness sinks into their own hearts. And then they are fated to wander this place forever, luring others in. My ‘disciples,’” she says, and it almost sounds like a sneer. “Misery does love company.”

“You don’t like them?” Quentin asks curiously, forgetting that she doesn’t owe him any answers.

“I serve the truth,” she says simply. “All its faces. Some people limit themselves only to one. And to choose _this_ one,” she touches the mirror stone on the ground with one cloven foot, disdainful, “and propagate it? It’s not false, perhaps, but it’s a shame.”

At Quentin’s confused look, the dragon blinks, like if she could roll her eyes, she would. “Despair, child,” she says, as though he’s a bit dim-witted. “It’s a dark mirror. You can lose yourself in the abyss, begin to believe it is the only truth. And there are those who would say that the grim, the dark, the worst version of the story is somehow realer or more meaningful than the rest. But there are other mirrors. And if you walk long enough, you will find them. Or perhaps, little fool, you will find that they were walking alongside you all along.”

“Uh, thank you. I mean, for the explanation, not for the ‘fool’ part. Again. Um.”

“I must be getting soft,” the dragon mutters. “The weapon you carry, child. The one crafted from our most precious jewel, the purest and brightest form of truth. You wonder why it doesn’t work. You worry that your heart isn’t true. But I see your heart, and it is not at fault. Your understanding of it, on the other hand…” She sighs. “A fool, as I said. But then, I should be kinder to the young. The most obvious truth can be difficult to see, when it changes what you’ve always known.”

“Yeah, thanks, that’s very helpful. I mean, really though, you don’t owe me anything, so I don’t mean to be sarcastic, I’m just not sure—maybe I am a fool, because I don’t really understand—”

The dragon closes her eyes and curls up on the ground around the mirror stone, as though to guard it. Which, Quentin realizes, she probably is: he’s given her one terrible piece of the treasure known as truth, to add to her hoard. She pays them no more attention, as though she’s said everything she wanted to say.

Quentin shuts up. And when she doesn’t stop them, he crosses the border, pulling Nigel with him out of the fog.

They walk in silence for a few minutes before Nigel tugs at Quentin’s hand, reminding him to release his grip. They come to a standstill, a few feet apart, awkward for the first time since they met. Quentin looks down. They’ve come to a place where the path is overgrown with thorny winter shrubs, forming a sort of hedge they’ll have to break through in order to continue.

Quentin should offer a completely inadequate thank you, or apologize for being an appalling asswipe, or something, but what comes out is: “Oh. Sorry. I just dragged you along, didn’t I? I never asked you if you actually wanted to go on, or go back. You were only going to bring me to the witch’s garden, after all.”

There’s a long pause.

“Well. I suppose I’m still not doing anything else, anyway,” Nigel says, just like he had that day at Chatwin’s Torrent, and at his crooked half-smile, Quentin feels warm for the first time since leaving the High King’s palace, and somehow, it’s not awkward anymore. Nigel nods at the hedge in front of them. “So?”

So they go on together, breaking through the tangle of twigs and thorns, and everything’s fine.

Of course, just as they emerge out of the thicket, they’re waylaid and captured by bandits.

* * *

Apart from looking kind of wild and frightening, with their strange tattoos and assortment of homemade weapons, the bandits don’t do anything more sinister than confiscate Nigel’s sword and drag the two of them back to their settlement. They ignore Quentin’s efforts to explain the nature of his quest for the entire long march to the bandit camp. Quentin ignores Nigel’s efforts to convince him that talking to these people is pointless, so that he can have a few moments of peace and quiet after this absolutely annihilating clusterfuck of a day. It’s all a cycle of very poor communication, but at least Quentin’s earnest prattling seems to convince their captors that he’s harmless, so they don’t search him carefully. The all-important dagger, still in its case, is tucked safely in the inner pockets of his cloak.

Well, that’s something, Nigel supposes.

“The world has grown dangerous,” proclaims one bandit, who appears to be some kind of senior lackey, or lieutenant, as they arrive in front of a row of small huts. “Anyone who crosses beyond the hedge trespasses on our lands, and must face the judgment of our leader. Take this one to the holding cell,” he instructs his sub-lackeys, gesturing at Quentin. “She wants to see you first,” he adds, reaching out to grab Nigel’s arm, but he draws back from the touch.

“Fine,” Nigel says easily, despite the headache that’s building up behind his eyes, and the weariness in his bones. “No need to touch me, I’ll come willingly.” Quentin, having stopped his incessant stream of pleas and explanations, is now wearing a mulish expression, like he’s going to fight the three guards there expressly to prevent him from interfering. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he tells Quentin.

“Me?” Quentin protests. “Which of us pulled out a sword and threatened to fight a dozen men? Great job convincing the group of armed bandits that we mean them no harm, Nigel!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe I should have immediately trusted the angry people pointing arrows at us, but then, they weren’t pretty redheads luring us into a frankly obvious trap, so…”

Quentin huffs an extremely exaggerated sigh, but also flushes and looks like he’s trying not to laugh at the absurdity of the entire situation. He’s got a good face for complicated emotional states. Nigel smiles at him, feeling a little better despite himself. “I’ll see you soon,” he promises. Provided that the chief bandit doesn’t deem him worthy of the death penalty, or whatever.

“Yeah, okay,” Quentin says. He sets his jaw and stares down the guards who are guiding him away. “If you hurt him—”

“I’d listen to him,” Nigel tells the senior lackey, once he’s sure Quentin is out of earshot. “Though he’s tiny, he’s fierce and all that. Persistent as fuck. It’s incredibly annoying.”

“Do you guys bicker like this all the time?” Nigel looks up. The chief bandit has turned to face him; thus far, she’s just been the back of a head, with a mass of dark, curly hair, walking in front of him. Now, she’s an attractive woman with a no-nonsense demeanor and a disbelieving expression. “No wonder you’re not getting anywhere.”

Spurred along by lieutenant lackey’s menacing glare, Nigel follows the chief into her hut.

“Look,” he says, skipping the pleasantries. It’s been a long fucking day. “As my companion has been saying _ad nauseum_, we’re travelers from a different land. And you know, there aren’t exactly great street signs or nighttime visibility here, so cut us a little slack for trespassing, okay? Also, we just tangoed with a fucking truth dragon—”

“_What_?” she asks.

“—so if you and I could settle whatever your problem is with—” His eyes fall on the impressive collection of liquors on the shelves behind the table, and he continues, inspired, “an old-fashioned drinking contest rather than a sword fight, I’d consider it a personal favor. I mean, I’ll beat you either way, but I could use a drink.”

“As tempted as I am to take you up on that,” she says, quirking a brow, “I know the burden you carry, asshole,” and oh, hi there, Kady.

“You know how to use a sword?” Eliot asks.

“Well, you were coming damn close to finding out,” she answers. She sets her sword, as well as the one she’s been holding since her lackeys took it from Nigel, against the wall, and sits down at the table. Eliot sits down across from her.

“So. Bandit hedge-witch?”

“At your service, although the witch part is a little iffy since there’s no magic, right? So, I’m here, you’ve won me over with your phenomenal capacity for drinking, the prize is my training in battle for your little friend, right? So he feels ready to tackle the Beast, yeah?”

Eliot considers. “Yeah, you know, I think it might be more of a mental block than a physical training thing.”

“The High King thought it might be a matter of building confidence. We all know he has the innate ability to use the weapon, but he thinks he can’t. Maybe because he hasn’t tested it out in action, built the practical skills. All heroes go through this, right? The big training montage?”

She shrugs, and he shrugs back. They’re neither of them the quest-experts on this team. It sounds as reasonable as anything else on this bizarre adventure, but all the same, Eliot doesn’t think the team’s got it quite right.

“Anyway, in my experience, the gap is usually emotional. It’s why, when you do battle magic, you have to strip yourself of the emotional garbage, and just focus on the facts of the situation at hand,” Kady adds.

Eliot remembers that. How calm, and capable, and powerful it had felt, not to be weighed down by fear, or doubt, or the pangs of unrequited love, or any of it. But he’s shaking his head. “I don’t know. I hear what you’re saying, but I think that this is different. The weapon he’s carrying _depends_ on emotion; it’s literally made out of it. We can’t just train or bottle it out of him.”

He thinks about the truth-telling dragon, another creation of Quentin’s mind, obviously. He’s such a nerd, Eliot thinks fondly, but he’s good at this kind of fairytale shit. First the story-spinning flowers, and now this: some part of Quentin, intuitively trying to work out the curse he’s caught in. Eliot’s not as good at it, but he can try to follow the crumbs Quentin’s inadvertently laying down.

The dragon hoarded jewels that represent the truth, all its different facets, she had said. The obsidian stone was despair, a narrow, dark, twisted sliver of a mirror; the crystals of the dagger that Quentin carries have to be love, reflecting the _purest and brightest_ version of the truth.

Of all the people in the universe, Eliot thinks, Quentin Coldwater should have no trouble embracing that romantic ideal and using it to defeat a beast. Unless, of course, something is actively trying to prevent him from doing so.

“Okay, well, what do you want to do? I’ve got my hedge-compatriots holding him in the next hut for now, so we can talk. Maybe he’ll break himself out and build some confidence that way, but I’m here for the training and the mastery part. I’m not going to be able to hold a therapy session if he needs to work out his feelings.”

“I think it’s more complicated than that,” Eliot says, because what feelings could Quentin possibly have to work out? He and Alice have been pretty much marked by fate for each other since day one. But then, the dragon had said that the problem wasn’t Quentin’s heart, but his understanding. So maybe he’s doubting the truth of Alice’s love for him, or his own worthiness? “Listen. We just emerged from this unexpected detour…” And he explains about the Plains of Truth.

“That is some messed up shit,” Kady says. “You think it’s his—you know, stuff?” she asks, pointing at her own head.

Well, it’s true that Quentin does have these downward spirals already traced out in his brain, just waiting for something to set him off, send him spinning down into the depths of despair. But he is the strongest person Eliot knows, precisely because he never stays down. Because he clings to something inside himself, some deeper kernel, and whether it’s actually truth or just a fiction, Eliot in his cynicism can never be sure, but the way Quentin believes in it, and it uplifts him, is beautiful to behold.

“I think his stuff makes him susceptible, but I think that someone, or something, is taking advantage of it.” His eyes land again on the swords. “So, we’re sparring right now, right? Our whole team, against the opposing team. Like a Welters tournament.”

“Right,” Kady says.

“But this is the second round, right here. The first round, we didn’t realize we were in the game. You get what I’m saying?”

“Okay…”

Eliot thinks about how he can phrase this, about the dream curse. “So that time, the first time, what happened? How did the tournament end?”

“The bonfire,” Kady answers. “The awful song.”

“Exactly. Everything went wrong. The worst possible outcome to every decision or situation. There was nothing redeeming to it.”

Alice had betrayed Quentin in the original cursed dream, and he’d had to cope with the fact that she, one of the loves of his life, had destroyed the other, magic. Eliot and Margo’s grand plan to shoot the Monster in the face had ended with said monster wearing Eliot’s face, and dragging Quentin along on his world-tour of murder. From what everyone had put together, Eliot thinks that Quentin had lost his father, and he hadn’t even been able to be there. It sounds like Margo was absorbed with the usual shit in Fillory, and that the others, even Julia, had had their own problems to deal with.

And then, whispers something in Eliot’s mind, there’s the fact that you rejected him after fifty years together in Fillory, and he still spent a dream year hyper-focused on getting you back, until nothing else mattered to him, not even his own life.

Eliot shoves that thought down where it belongs. Now is hardly the time to make it all about himself and his issues.

“I mean, there were probably a few good moments,” Kady says, but not so much argumentatively as thoughtfully. She’s trying to follow where he’s going.

“Okay, sure, but a few good throws didn’t outweigh the fact that we lost, every time it actually mattered. And going through a game like that can make you feel like giving up, right? Quitting?”

From what Eliot understands about the way Quentin’s brain breaks, it doesn’t even need the genuinely bad things to set it off sometimes. Depression’s a bitch like that, even if you have a ton of love and support from the people in your life. So the bullshit story that Blackspire gave him, one hit after another after another, with every support system pulled away… it is kind of an undeniable setup for badness, isn’t it? No matter how strong Quentin is, it must have felt impossible to endure an onslaught of misery like that, without a shred of a sign that it could get better, that sometimes, things can work out for the good.

“Sure. It makes you feel like there’s no point.”

That’s it, Eliot thinks. It has to be. Quentin had been awfully fixated, under the influence of the mirror stone, on the _point_. Something was pushing him into thinking that _sacrifice_ was the only thing that would save him from a pointless existence.

“That’s what the Plains of Truth were like, too, you see? They gave him the facts, but always the worst possible interpretation of them. So what I’m thinking is, that’s the other team’s strategy.”

“They rig the game,” Kady realizes. “Always the grim-dark option. So that you always feel like you’re losing, and—”

“You give up on believing that there’s a way to walk off the field a winner. You think that the sacrifice play is the only valid one you can make.”

That has to be it. The dream curse is a loop. They’d thought that the reason Quentin didn’t realize that he was trapped was because he was just too caught up in the quest to care, but now, Eliot realizes, it’s more than that. The curse is weighing Quentin down, playing on his vulnerabilities, with despair. It’s trying to make him believe that there’s no way out, so that he doesn’t understand that _there’s a way out._ Maybe it’s making him believe that he isn’t worthy of the dagger, of true love, so that he can’t use it to defeat the Beast. It needs him to give up, so that it can just hit the reset button and start him on the futile cycle all over again, and his mind won’t fight it.

Well, if Blackspire wants someone who gives up easily, Eliot thinks, it fucked up when it chose Quentin Coldwater. It might have won the first round, but his mind is obviously rebelling against it, and he’s got his friends stepping up to the plate too, now.

“That’s what he did,” Kady says, sounding worried. “In the—last episode. He sacrificed himself to save magic, right? If that’s the rigged choice he gets in this round, too, do we know that it won’t happen again?”

She’s right. They’ve set this up so that Quentin defeats the Beast, frees Alice, and restores magic, before walking into the sunset with Alice by his side. But if the dream curse alters things so that Quentin thinks he has to _sacrifice_ himself to complete his quest instead…

Are they fucked? Doomed to repeat this, no matter what they do to change the plot?

No, Eliot thinks. They can still win this. He trusts that Alice will be able to protect herself, so it’s unlikely that the curse can manufacture a situation where Quentin thinks the only way to save _her_ is to sacrifice himself. Even in the dream, he’s gone on and on about how his beloved is so much better at magic than he is. And well, the Beast could kill Quentin, but there’s not much they can do about that besides make sure he’s as confident in his ability to use this weapon as he can be. If there’s any internal consistency in this dream world, the dagger that’s billed as “the most powerful magic in the world” has to be capable of killing the Beast, as long as Quentin believes he can do it.

No, the real risk is if Quentin falls into the trap of thinking he has to sacrifice himself to save _magic_ again. And if the Plains of Truth are any indication, Blackspire is obviously going to try to make him think that way, that such a sacrifice is the only thing that will lend his whole adventure any meaning.

But then, Eliot thinks, they’ve got an ace in the hole. They know Quentin better than any castle or curse ever could.

“If it comes to that,” Eliot says, “then she—his beloved—has to remind him that it’s not worth it. Magic, the quest, none of it matters more than the two of them, waking up together tomorrow morning, you know? That it’s better to give up the—uh, plot—than to sacrifice his life.”

“Are you sure that’ll work? This is our hero, we’re talking about.”

Eliot shakes his head again. “Look, Quentin loves the quest. He’s got a hero complex, everyone knows that.” He gestures into the air. Blackspire, the curse, the world at large knows that. “But…” Against his will, Eliot’s remembering the Mosaic. Fifty years. Quentin had gotten the key, in the end, but only after he _gave up_ on the quest. There _is_ something he cares about more. Eliot knows it. He’s lived it. “But give him a choice between the quest, and a life with the person, the people he loves, and he’ll—just trust me. So tell her that she has to…” Eliot spares a thought for Alice, her uncertainty and her doubts. He’s sorry to do it, but it’s the only way. “She has to sell it. The _enough_, and the _after_. She’ll know what I mean.”

If Alice can get over herself long enough to paint a picture of the life they’d lead, _sans_ quest, even if there’s no magic, just countless mornings waking up and nights drifting off to sleep, tangled up in each other; the long working days, the rare and impossibly beautiful days, even the truly bad days, and then the rest of their days, strangely, perfectly ordinary; a small life, like a home built on the foundation of the two of them and their love, but with the capacity to expand, to add rooms for their friends, for their _family_…

The thing is, it’s actually very simple. Because that kind of life is something that Quentin desperately wants to believe in. He’d wanted it so badly that he’d even settled for Eliot as a placeholder, once upon a time. If it’s Alice Quinn dangling herself and their future in front of him, it’s a no-brainer. He’s not going to sacrifice himself, not while he has that to look forward to, no matter what the curse says or does.

Kady’s looking at him strangely. “You know, I never actually asked. But did the two of them ever—are they actually on again?”

Eliot shrugs. On again, off again, whatever, it’s a matter of time. “Quentin’s on a quest to save his beloved,” he says pointedly. Obviously, it’s something that he still wants, which is good enough for this plan to work. “If he can dream it, he can do it.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think that he’ll be—you know, upset, if he later realizes that it was all—”

“He can be as upset as he likes, and I’ll give exactly zero fucks,” Eliot interrupts. Because like he’d told Alice, what matters is getting Quentin back.

“And I don’t know his beloved all that well,” Kady says slowly, “but she doesn’t strike me as someone who’s, you know, going to take home the Oscar for actress in a leading role, not if she doesn’t actually—”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “It’ll be fine.” Quentin’s big, stupid, impossibly romantic heart is going to do all the difficult work of imagining, here. All Alice has to do is not break his heart and destroy all his hopes, which would of course make him vulnerable to the dream curse’s push for sacrifice. How hard can that be?

At this moment, they’re interrupted by the sounds of a commotion outside. The ground shakes with the dull thud of people running in all directions, and there’s a lot of indistinct yelling.

“Either your settlement’s being attacked,” Eliot starts.

“Or our boy’s found some confidence and escaped,” Kady finishes. “We need to end this thing. But listen. If he needs emotional support or whatever before we hit the final stretch—”

“I think he needs someone to assure him that he’s worthy of true love,” Eliot guesses. “I think the other team’s depressive strategy is making him doubt that. So if we help him understand how awesome his own heart is, he’ll see that he can use the magic within to power the weapon, you know? I, Nigel, am doing my best, but maybe it’ll carry more weight coming from a character with more of a mystical, magical pedigree. ”

Kady laughs, a little bitter, but a lot amused. “Oh, he’s going to love that.” Yup, last stop is Penny-23. “I’ll do my best to set it up,” she says, and reaches across the table to drop a stone in the pouch Eliot’s pulled out from under his shirt.

Nigel’s instinctively drawing back from where the chief bandit has reached out her hands to examine the Fairy Queen’s gift when the door of the hut bursts open. They both startle, and the bandit sinks back in her seat.

“Let him go!” Quentin says, and when Nigel looks over, he’s lighting up the room. Not just in the disgusting sentimental way Nigel suffers through, with his eyes and his face and his smile, but literally lighting it up with the dagger he’s brandishing. What had previously been a fragile and beautiful crystal construction is now a strange, multifarious thing: it’s got angles like diamond, emitting white light like it’s illuminated from within, and at the same time, shimmering hazily like flames. _Magic_.

“Huh. That doesn’t look like he needs much instruction,” the bandit says.

“No. Full marks for dramatic entrance, hero. Very dashing,” Nigel says.

Quentin seems to take in the scene he’s walked in on, and how Nigel and the chief bandit are enjoying a companionable drink together.

“What the fuck,” he says, walking over. The light of his weapon is blinding.

“Can you turn that down?” Nigel asks, shading his eyes.

“I don’t know how. I don’t even know how I got it to turn on!”

“Now I see the problem,” the bandit remarks drily.

“You, stay back! Nigel, are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“She’s not a bandit. She’s a _bandit hedge-witch_!” Quentin exclaims, like that should mean something to Nigel.

“Uh. Okay?”

Quentin makes an adorable sound of frustration. “How do you not know any of this stuff? What kind of guide _are_ you?”

Nigel laughs, delighted at the reversal. “I’ve obviously taught you well,” he remarks.

“They’re dangerous,” Quentin says. “The guards were talking in front of me, and I figured it out. In the days of magic, hedge-witches were common, and most covens were peaceful. But one coven, led by a cruel and cunning witch, was greedy for more power. They became known as the bandit, or the robber hedge-witches. They exploited magic users, stealing their magical objects and hoarding their spellbooks for their own gain. They cast spells that would harm innocent people, not caring who they hurt if it furthered their own magic. So when the Beast stole magic from the land and came for the peaceful covens, their defenses were already rendered weak by the robbery of these hedge-witches.”

The chief bandit, or rather, the robber hedge-witch, is staring at Quentin as he speaks, wary. She blinks. “It’s true,” she says finally. “This coven was led by a cruel and cunning witch, once upon a time. I was one of the people she exploited. I hurt people, in her employ. In her reckless quest to gain more magic, no matter the cost. But she’s dead now.”

“Oh,” Quentin says, wind going out of his sails. “What happened to her?”

“Well, she was. She was killed by a beast, of sorts. Not the one you’re thinking of. It’s complicated. But anyway, I took over the leadership of the coven, and now we’re dedicated to…” Her unsure voice gains confidence as she goes on. “Well, to making sure that everyone has the chance to understand magic, not just the chosen few. We have all these books and artifacts, so we keep them safe, and study them, for the day that someone might bring magic back to the world again,” she says.

“Oh,” Quentin says again. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“So your guide’s been telling me,” the hedge-witch says. “But he didn’t say you had such a powerful magical weapon, and knew how to wield it.”

“I don’t,” Quentin says. “I mean.” He looks over at Nigel uncertainly. “I don’t know what I did. They were talking about some of the artifacts they’d collected, in the days of magic, and I realized who they were, and I was so—I thought, these people were using magic to hurt others, instead of— shouldn’t magic be used to protect people, and heal them, and mend the world, not break it more? And then, they’d taken you prisoner, and they’re so dangerous, and they wouldn’t tell me where you were, and when I asked them if you were safe they just laughed at me—and I just, you know, pulled out the dagger, and it all exploded out of me.”

He pauses his rambling to take a deep breath. Nigel clears his throat delicately. “So, let me get this straight. You thought we were being held prisoner by a bunch of evil witches who kill people to steal magical artifacts, so you decided to threaten them with your really rare _magical artifact_ that you don’t even know how to use properly?”

“Um,” Quentin says.

“But then, through some exquisite sense of timing or sheer dumb luck, your righteous love of magic was the trick you needed to make the dagger work after all?”

“Oh,” Quentin says. “I didn’t—maybe you’re right, and that’s it.” He sounds very confused. The light of the dagger dims as he thinks, until it finally goes out.

Nigel rolls his eyes. “As I’ve been telling the chief bandit hedge-witch here, you’re on a quest to defeat the Beast, save your beloved, and restore magic to the world.” He’s being mocking, but can hear his own tone soften as he goes on. “Quentin, it’s obvious how much you love magic. I mean, if it’s your _true love_, then I hope your girl’s okay with sharing you.” Couldn’t this have been what the dragon had meant, about Quentin understanding his own heart? It’s a bit difficult to imagine sweet, romantic Quentin prioritizing anything over the person he loves, even magic, but still. If it makes the dagger work, that’s what matters. “Anyway, I get the feeling she’s as into magic as you are, so who am I to judge if you bring a third party into your marriage?”

“Well, she is very—she’s really talented at magic, like I told you,” Quentin says. There’s still something bemused about the way he’s speaking, like maybe he got hit in the head during the altercation outside, and can’t quite make sense of whatever’s going on in his mind.

Nigel shrugs. “There you go. With any luck, she has more sense than you do, too. Because seriously. Sassing dragons, battling hedge-witches. ‘More courage than sense’ is a condition, my heroic friend, and I’m sorry to say, you’re afflicted.”

“Oh, shut up,” Quentin says, sounding more like himself. Sulky and fond.

“Anyway,” interrupts the robber hedge-witch, eyes flicking between the two of them quickly before settling on Quentin. “Your friend bargained for me to use our knowledge of magical artifacts to help train you, but I see that ability is not your problem.”

“Yeah, I just don’t understand how—I mean, if I get there, and then it doesn’t work—”

“Not to worry,” she says. “There’s a wise man who lives to the north, a psychic, whose magic allows him to see into the hearts and minds of others. Such magic is innate, and immune to theft by the Beast. If you go see him, I’m sure he’ll be able to help you understand how to use the dagger consistently, so it does not fail you in your moment of truth.”

“Oh. Yeah. That would be, uh, good,” Quentin stutters. He’s wringing his hands together anxiously.

“Take a moment of rest,” the hedge-witch says. “I’ll have someone prepare the sled for you.”

“The sled?” Nigel asks, once she’s gone.

“Yeah, it’s started to snow,” Quentin says. He’s looking at the dagger, still perplexed. He picks it up, but nothing happens. Finally, he tucks it into a scabbard on his belt, instead of back into the case. Well, that makes sense, Nigel supposes. They’re getting close to the end, now. Time to be ready.

Nigel tries to feel excited for Quentin, instead of sad. It’s not that he doubts that Quentin will succeed. It’s just that when he does…

He stands up too. Where is the robber hedge-witch? If they’re going to do this, they should get it over with.

“You bargained?” Quentin asks suddenly. “For her to help me? What does that mean?”

“Oh, now that’s a story,” Nigel says, and explains about how he’d talked her into a friendly drinking contest instead of a nasty sword fight, and it had turned into a discussion of Quentin’s quest, and all the magical knowledge the hedge-witches have here.

When he winds up his tale, Quentin’s wearing a curious expression, mouth slightly open, eyes wide. But he clears his throat and says, mocking Nigel’s tone exactly, the little shit, “So, let me get this straight. We got attacked and kidnapped by a bunch of hedge-witches, and after one of them took up your stupidly reckless challenge of a sword fight, you convinced her to do a drinking contest instead? Which you won. And then, instead of bargaining for your own life or escape, you asked her to use her knowledge of magic to help me with my quest?”

“Yeah,” Nigel says, because so far, so obvious.

“You are so fucking ridiculous,” Quentin says, and there’s really no call for that, Nigel thinks, even though he’s secretly pleased to an embarrassing degree by Quentin’s insults, and the way he delivers them, a little prickly, but always warm and soft underneath, like good wool.

Nigel turns away and busies himself with collecting his sword and donning his cloak.

“You boys ready?” the robber hedge-witch asks, returning from where she’s been conferring with her colleagues. She ushers them toward the back door of the hut. “This doorway will lead you down to the stables, and my sled dogs. They’ll carry you over the snow at the swiftest speeds, to where the Psychic lives. He’ll look into your heart, and help you embrace your power at will.” She glances down at Quentin’s belt as she passes him on her way to the door. “And maybe also turn it off at will.”

“What?” Quentin asks, from where he hasn’t moved at all, seemingly coming out of a reverie.

Nigel laughs again when he sees what she means, even though it hurts. “Always dreaming ahead, this one,” he says. You knew you wouldn’t get to keep this, he tells himself. Of course Quentin’s thinking about getting magic back, and reuniting with his beloved, and ending this quest. “Can’t keep his mind off the quest, it seems. What _are_ you thinking about?” he teases, winking at Quentin.

“What?” Quentin repeats.

“You’re glowing again, hero. I applaud your progress, but we’re not at war with your beast, not yet. Might be a good idea to enter power save mode.” He nods at the dagger, which, indeed, is emitting a halo of white light from where it’s tucked in Quentin’s belt. Seriously, the boy’s obviously got a lot of heart, but he should save some of it for the actual quest.

Quentin stares at him. He blinks. He looks down at the dagger. He looks up again.

“Oh,” he says.

“Quentin?” Nigel asks, more seriously, because Quentin’s acting very spacey right now, and things are about to get dangerous.

“You better get going before the snow gets worse,” the hedge-witch calls impatiently, from where she’s standing with her hand on the door handle. Quentin jumps, and scurries over, still wearing a dazed expression. Nigel follows, puzzled and concerned. The hedge-witch does something with her arms, a complicated series of movements that might have once been a spell, back when magic was still readily available in the world.

“The battle ritual of the hedge-witches,” she explains. “For luck.”

And they pass through the door together.

* * *

**vi. The Psychic and the Traveler**

Quentin barely registers the journey to the psychic’s house, a swift ride over the soft blanket of snow that’s covered the land. So lost is he in his thoughts that it passes like a dream, and he wakes up to find himself facing the irritable-looking man who’s just cracked open his front door. He’s wearing the intricately gold patterned red robes that mark him as a mystic, and a very impressive frown.

“Aren’t you a little young to be a wise man?” Nigel asks.

The man rolls his eyes at Nigel, and turns his glare on Quentin. “Let me guess,” he says. “You’re here because you’re on a quest to destroy a beast, save the woman you love, and restore magic to all the land.”

“Huh,” Nigel says, stepping inside when the man opens the door all the way. Quentin follows automatically. “Guess you are who we’re looking for.”

“Psychic,” the psychic says, pointing at his own head. “It’s literally in the name.”

Quentin wants to laugh, all of a sudden. This man can’t read his mind. Maybe, once upon a time, he would have been right… but he’s just caught up in the boxes, isn’t he?

Quentin’s been calling the girl he loved once his “beloved” for so long, he’s forgotten to think about it, to consider that it may not be his truth, anymore. He remembers the story of the princess turned High King, and how it can take people time to understand and accept the truth, especially when it changes what they’ve always known. He remembers the prince, and how it’s easy to fall into a script, and stop asking whether you actually want the things you think you want.

Quentin’s been trying so hard to be a hero that he’s missed something that’s right in front of him: the truth of his quest.

He wants to restore magic to the world, that’s true. Magic can help so many people, and add beauty to their lives, and Quentin loves it, its possibilities and its mysteries, he always has.

If there’s anything left of the girl he loved in the Castle at the End of the World, he wants to set her free. He doesn’t want her to hurt anyone else, least of all herself. That’s true, too.

But, he realizes, none of it—the thrill of the quest, the title of hero, _magic_, the girl—would mean anything without Nigel at his side.

He’d give them up, if he had to, for Nigel’s smile and his voice, for his sly teasing and his soft, serious looks. For the way Quentin feels when they’re together, the wash of anticipation and expectation and excitement over what might happen next, however ordinary it might turn out to be.

And he wants to break Nigel’s curse, of course he does. He still believes there has to be a way. Perhaps Quentin truly can’t resist a quest, and he won’t give up, because that’s not the person he is, but… gods forbid, if they never break the curse, he still wants to be there for the life they’d lead trying. Even if he never gets to touch Nigel’s skin the way he realizes he might have always wanted to, since the day he startled him awake in the waters of Chatwin’s Torrent.

He loves Nigel. And Nigel, who doesn’t believe in quests or heroes or stories or any of it, is here simply because he believes in Quentin. They could build something together, a life worth living, without any quests at all, Quentin realizes. Just because Quentin is Quentin and Nigel is Nigel. If Quentin never set off on another quest again, it’d still be an adventure: the daily grind of it, the mornings waking up together and the sun rising and maybe the bedtime stories he’d tell and the lullabies Nigel would sing and the happiness of it, the truth of what he wants.

There’s a word on the tip of his tongue, for this feeling that’s suffusing him, lighting him up from the inside out. Love, yes, and truth, but entwined in all that, this fragile, dangerous thing with feathers, which makes him feel like he could fly.

Outside, the storm is growing fiercer. The wind rattles the windows of the psychic’s cabin, startling Quentin out of his thoughts.

“I can give you nothing greater than the power you already possess. What lives within you is enough to ignite this weapon’s flame,” the psychic says, like he’d rather be elsewhere.

“Obviously,” Nigel says, tart as anything. “He’s glowing again. What we’re asking is, how can we be sure he’ll manage it when he’s facing the Beast?”

Quentin inhales and exhales. This is it. He has to tell Nigel, right now. He looks up, sure that it’s written all over his face, but Nigel’s scowling at the psychic, who’s pulling a disgusted face right back at him.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. Clearly, he can do it. He just has to concentrate really hard on whatever lights him up, and not let anything distract him from it.” The psychic sighs, and turns to Quentin. “Look, man. The north, where you’re going? It has a way of twisting things. So you’ve got to hold on tight to whatever’s causing this lightshow.”

“How is this helpful?” Nigel snaps. “He’s not sure he _understands_ what’s causing the lightshow! Maybe it’s his love of magic, but that’s just a guess, and I don’t want him to gamble his life if—”

“I understand,” Quentin says.

“I’m not doubting you,” Nigel says, still agitated. “I believe in you, you know that. I want you to do this, to get what you want. But you’ve been acting weird again, and I just want—” He breaks off and sighs. “Obviously, you’ve learned the trick of the dagger. So if you’re sure you understand it…”

“I’m sure.”

Nigel keeps looking at him, worried, but he relents. “Okay.”

“Okay, then,” the psychic says. “Next step is the big one. The only way to get to the castle you’re trying to find is through a portal. I’ve got a—cousin, a traveler, who can bring you there. But the portal only carries one person. So, time to break up this dream team and get to the finish line.”

“No,” Quentin says.

The psychic blinks. “Look, you can’t bring your best bud along to your big romantic finale, everyone knows that,” he says. “It’s not the end of the world. Or, well, I guess it is, the Castle at the End of the World. But you know what I mean. This is the only way to get there. So…”

“That’s the thing, though,” Quentin interrupts loudly. The psychic stops talking, although he looks like he’s seriously considering throwing Quentin back out into the cold. “I don’t think I need to get there.”

The psychic blinks at him like he’s insane. Quentin ignores him, and turns to Nigel, who’s wearing a much more concerned version of the same expression. “Can I talk to you alone?” he asks, more quietly.

“Now?” asks Nigel, after a pregnant pause.

“Yeah. It kind of has to be now.”

“I guess that’s true. All right,” Nigel says. He turns to the psychic.

“Oh, no fucking way am _I_ stepping out into that blizzard so you two can have a super secret sleepover!”

Nigel rolls his eyes. “Come on, Quentin,” he says, and makes toward the door through which they entered.

“Wait,” the psychic says. “Don’t go that way. Just, fine. You can go into my fucking meditation room.” He shows them to a side door with gauzy curtains, which leads into a room lit by soft candlelight. “It’s soundproofed, so it’ll be private for your tearful goodbyes and whatever. I’ll wait out here. You know, at your leisure.” He rolls his eyes too as he leaves.

“Okay,” Nigel says, breezy and bright, “is this another moment of doubt? Because if so, better make it good. It’s the last one you get on this quest. With me, at least.” He glances away quickly, before looking back at Quentin, recovering his encouraging smile.

“No,” Quentin says. “I think it’s my moment of truth.”

“Okay…” Nigel repeats. “So?”

“So, I’ve been thinking about when we were crossing the Plains of Truth. Some of the things the mirror stone showed me,” Quentin starts.

“They were lies. We’ve established that,” Nigel says immediately.

“No. I mean, they were twisted, and ugly, and awful, but the thing is, they weren’t entirely false. What they forced me to confront about the quest. Maybe there is no happily ever after, not for the boy I was, and the girl I loved then.”

“What are you saying?” Nigel asks, bewildered. “Of course there is. Why else have we come this far?”

“I think I had to believe it,” Quentin muses. “I wouldn’t have survived that day otherwise. I had to believe that it was all because of the Beast, and if I could defeat him, I could get her back. That I could get magic back. Because otherwise, what was the point?”

“Right,” Nigel says, like he’s encouraging a wayward child. “Everything we’ve done has been so that you can get there, to the Castle at the End of the World. So you can save her. So you can restore magic to the world. I know you’re frightened to face the Beast again, but—”

“Nigel,” interrupts Quentin, “there is no Beast. Not anymore. He’s dead.” Once he’s spoken it out loud, he can’t take it back. He has to face the truth of it, the one he’s been hiding from himself. He’s thinking about it, an image he’s repressed: the Beast’s body, dead on the ground; the girl he loved, victorious, and terribly cruel in her victory.

“What? Then what—”

“I told you. She was very skilled at magic. She defeated him. But,” he hurries on, before Nigel can ask, “when it was done, she was not the same.”

“She was cursed,” Nigel says slowly. “The Beast enslaved her, you said.”

Quentin shakes his head. “The amount of magic it had taken to defeat the Beast, and the amount she had absorbed from him, was too much for anyone to handle. I tried to convince her to let it go, but she wouldn’t. She took it all, and all the rest of the magic in the world, besides. And she left me there to die from the pain of it, losing her.”

“Oh, Quentin,” Nigel says, soft and shaky. “I’m so—”

“I thought, this is the curse of the Beast’s magic, his last revenge on us, for trying to stop him. And that maybe I could remove it, and get back to the way things were. But—”

“Right,” Nigel interrupts, all business again. “So come on, don’t give up on that now. You told me that all curses can be broken. Do you still believe it?”

Quentin meets his eyes. “I do,” he says, with conviction, because he really, truly does.

Nigel pauses for dramatic effect. “Well, then. I’m not the hero, but I’m assuming true love will carry the day, here.”

“Exactly,” Quentin answers. “That’s what I thought. But what if the truth is, she’s not cursed? What if she’s just changed?”

Nigel frowns at him. “Do you think she’s so changed that she doesn’t—I can’t imagine she doesn’t love you anymore. That’s ludicrous,” he says, outraged, like it’s impossible to believe that anyone might not love _Quentin_, and oh, Quentin is lit up by his love for this absolutely ridiculous man, his glorious changeability and his breathtaking steadiness. He feels like he’s glowing. “Uh, Quentin. You’re on again,” Nigel adds, and oh, Quentin actually is glowing, on account of the true love dagger he’s carrying.

He laughs. “That’s sort of my point. What if I’m not the boy I was?” Quentin continues, voice shaking a little in his excitement. “What if I don’t love _her_ anymore?”

“What? Why would you not—”

“That day, the centaurs sent me to Chatwin’s Torrent. They said that I’d find what I needed, to move forward,” Quentin says, trying to work his way up to it.

“Right,” Nigel says again, blankly. “The water.”

Quentin just looks at him. Nigel is many things, but completely oblivious is not actually one of them, however much he pretends, sometimes. He blinks, and Quentin can see that he’s starting to get it.

“All this time I’ve started to feel better, I’ve been thinking that it’s the quest, just giving me a sense of purpose. But Nigel. Magic isn’t back. I haven’t saved the girl. Maybe it’s just… maybe it’s not a happy _ending_, but I’ve just been _happy_, because I’ve been with—”

“No. Stop,” Nigel says, very forcefully calm. “Let’s just—take a step back. Let’s go over the—the plan, we’ll talk to the psychic—” He’s turning toward the curtains, like he’s really going to go and fetch the angry man in the room next door, right this second.

“You,” Quentin says, and Nigel freezes. “I know it sounds crazy, because we met under such strange circumstances, and it’s been such a short time, but… you and me, we work, don’t we? Even if we never got magic back. Even if there was no more quest, if it was just the two of us, living out our days. I just think it would still be… we could be really, really good.”

Is it selfish? Quentin loves magic, and he wants the world to have it. They can still try. Just maybe not at the expense of his own life. His own future, his own love, he thinks, giddy.

“Nigel,” he says. “Sometimes you _know_.” Quentin thinks that maybe he’s known since that day at Chatwin’s Torrent, when Nigel could have left, and sat down to listen to Quentin’s tale, instead. When Quentin could have let him go, but kept searching for a reason to extend their conversation. What is it about the two of them, the alignment of the stars and the fates that brought them together, or the conscious choices they’ve made, and keep making, to stay? What else can it be, besides this fundamental thing: the heart’s act of knowing, and being known?

Nigel looks stricken, still standing motionless. “Quentin,” he manages finally, with a slight, aborted shake of his head. There’s terror in his eyes that Quentin thinks he understands.

“And I know there’s your curse, and that complicates things, but Nigel.” Quentin pauses, a little shy, but when he goes on, his voice is earnest and sure. “There might be a simple solution we’ve been overlooking. I mean. If you feel—the way I feel—”

True love’s kiss, he thinks, but doesn’t say. It wouldn’t work the way he originally intended, because he doesn’t love the girl he loved, once upon a time, but it might save Nigel now.

Quentin takes a tiny step forward, but Nigel’s backing away, holding his arms up.

“Please, stop,” he pleads. “You can’t. You don’t understand.” And then, very quietly, he says, “I can’t, Quentin, okay?”

“You can’t what?”

“Feel the way you feel,” Nigel bites out. “Or the way you think you—you shouldn’t… I _can’t_ love you.”

“What?” Quentin asks, because rejection he could maybe take, but that doesn’t seem like a straightforward rejection.

Nigel closes his eyes, and then pulls the little pouch he wears around his neck out from under his collar. “It’s the price, all right? I’m not capable of loving anyone, anymore.”

“Nigel, what does that—I don’t understand.”

This time, when he answers, Nigel has carefully stripped his voice and face of any emotion. He says, “I told you, I went to the Fairy Queen, and asked if my curse could be removed. I’d lost everything, everyone I loved, my family. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. And she told me, she could not remove it, but she could lock it away, minimize the effects. But only if I locked away my heart, too.”

“Oh, no,” Quentin breathes out, horrified. “Oh, Nigel.”

“So,” Nigel continues, resolutely calm and dry-eyed, “I did. And as long as I don’t love anyone, or feel anything in my heart, I can’t hurt anyone. So what you’re suggesting is impossible. You see?”

“Oh, I see,” Quentin says. He steps forward again, holding up his arms slowly like he’s calming a spooked animal when Nigel flinches. Then, swift as can be, he reaches forward and yanks the pouch, breaking the string around Nigel’s neck.

“Quentin, no!”

Quentin clutches the leather bag tightly in his hand. “The man you loved,” he starts, abruptly, furiously certain, “did you kill him?”

“What?”

“You said, you lost him. You hurt him. So, what was it? You were happy, for years, and then one day, out of nowhere, the curse activated and he touched your skin and burned? Bruised? Bled?”

“Please, you’re not so cruel. Don’t make me remember this,” Nigel begs, eyes wide, but Quentin doesn’t stop.

“None of that, right?” he asks. “The way you hurt him, it’s the way you’re hurting me, isn’t it? You didn’t _lose him_. You _left_ him.”

“I had to,” Nigel whispers, face crumpling. “I’m cursed. It wouldn’t have worked, it couldn’t have lasted.”

“The story you told me,” Quentin realizes, “it’s not the facts. It’s not the whole truth. It’s just the story you’ve been telling yourself, because it’s the only way you could live with yourself.” The same way that Quentin’s spent all this time believing, resolutely, that it was the Beast who had left him to die, who had taken his once-beloved against her will. Because he couldn’t face the truth of what had actually happened that day, until now.

“Fine,” Nigel says, and he’s not crying, but his voice sounds twisted and wretched, like if he thought he was a person who was allowed to cry he would have long since dissolved in his tears. “I just—I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was so young, and stupid, and reckless when I ran away from my village. I didn’t care who I hurt. All the people I’d been with, and touched, heedless of the curse—I knew it would all come back to haunt me. I didn’t understand, until I had people who I actually cared about, people I could _lose_. And I thought, it’s no less than you deserve, for killing your brother, for hurting your father, for putting countless others at risk, in your selfishness. I was so happy, and how did I deserve that? The curse would know, and it would exact it from them. And I couldn’t do it. Not to them. Not with my own hands. So I left.”

Quentin’s heart breaks for him, but he can’t let this stand. Nigel hadn’t let him stop, hadn’t let him sink into his despair on the Plains of Truth, and Quentin can’t do anything less for him now. He has to make Nigel see. “That’s the curse,” he says. “Don’t you see it? Nothing ever happened, for all those years—”

“Because I didn’t care!” Nigel says. “That’s the only thing that saved all those people. And now that I’ve locked away my heart, I can’t care again, and I can’t hurt anyone.”

Oh, this is twisted. This is awful.

“This bag,” Quentin says, tipping it upside down, shaking it about, “does not contain your heart. Nigel, this curse is just your fear. Of course you’re more afraid when it’s someone you care about, and the Fairy Queen preyed on that! She convinced you that it’s your fault, that when you care about people, when you touch them, you hurt them, but it’s not, it’s not real!”

“No,” Nigel insists, “you didn’t see it. The flowers that withered, the animals…”

“Because you believed that’s what your touch would do! Because this curse sustains itself on your fear of it, your belief in it! Just like you believe it now, that your heart is locked away, but sweetheart, it’s not. You have a beating heart, such a beautiful one, and of course you’re capable of love, I’ve seen it.”

Nigel, dragging himself out of his own misery to help Quentin for no reason at all, except that he saw something worthwhile in Quentin’s efforts. Every time he’s put his life at risk, every fire he’s built and meal he’s made, every smile and kind word, every step of the way. What else has it been, driving him, besides love?

“All curses can be broken,” Quentin says. He’s tipping his face up, asking without words, and there’s such an answering look of longing on Nigel’s face that Quentin is sure he’s right. A kiss from someone Nigel truly loves, who truly loves him in return, will break the hold of this curse, if only he’ll _believe_… “I love you so. Won’t you let me try?”

There’s a knife’s edge of an instant, an eternity contained within the infinitesimal pause. Everything between them rests on it, hovering, waiting; everything in this entire godforsaken world, Quentin thinks wildly, depends on the outcome of this moment.

It’s a strange thing, but as he thinks it, the whole world seems to shimmer in front of him like a heat haze. He feels as though it’s all insubstantial, or perhaps that he himself is unreal, but if Nigel would only step forward instead of back, the touch of his lips would bring Quentin back to reality. There’s real power here, crackling in the space between them. But then…

“No,” Nigel says again, “no. How could I bear it, if you—if you touched me, and I hurt _you_—”

“Nigel, _please_,” Quentin says, pleading in his turn.

But Nigel straightens up, and arranges his face into neutrality. He steps back, graceful as always. “Go back to your quest, hero,” he says coolly, and for the first time, the moniker feels like a dismissal rather than a mark of affection. “You’ve steered far off course. I’m not your damsel, remember?”

It’s silent in the room. Soundproofed. They can’t hear the storm raging outside, but all of a sudden, Quentin imagines not the lightning and the thunder and the howling wind and crashing hail, but just the soft blanket of white snow. It feels inviting, the cold, for the first time.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

All this love he’s held in his heart, what is it even good for? The only thing it’s ever brought him is pain.

Something infiltrates Quentin’s heart then, a splinter, a darkness. It’s been here all along in this world, weighing on him, trying to find a way in, but he’s resisted it until now. He doesn’t remember how, what it was, that nameless feeling, the one that kept the darkness at bay. Now that it’s gone, though, the darkness and the despair sink into the cracks of his broken heart, flood his veins, settle into the marrow of his bones.

He walks into the main room again. He doesn’t glance back at Nigel.

The psychic, lingering by the windows, says, “Finally.” Then he looks up. “I didn’t actually think you’d cry,” he says. “You get that this isn’t actually—you know what? Never mind. Time to go?”

Where is he going? What’s the point of this quest, again?

His old mantra feels like a joke. There is no Beast to defeat. He can’t save the girl he loved with true love’s kiss, because she doesn’t want to be saved, and he doesn’t love her anymore. As for restoring magic to the world…

You can still save magic, says the voice in his head. This could all still serve a higher purpose.

But how? Quentin wonders. She’s gathered it all to herself jealously, his once-beloved, afraid to give up even a drop to the rest of the world. She’s not going to let it go.

Unless, of course, Quentin offers her an inexhaustible reservoir of magic in exchange. And not just any magic. The purest and brightest and truest magic in the world.

He looks down at the dagger at his belt, and is utterly unsurprised to find that it’s transformed itself into shiny black glass.

Pain is the sacrifice we make to the gods, he recalls, and love is truly the worst pain.

If it’s magic she wants, then Quentin has plenty to offer up.

He knows what he has to do.

* * *

Nigel stands there for a long time. He doesn’t know how many seconds or minutes or hours pass before he drops to his knees to pick up the pouch that Quentin had dropped at his feet, silently, as he left. He doesn’t get up, but stays on the ground, pouch clutched in his fist.

This is the right thing, he tells himself. This is the only way. Quentin will go to the castle, and he’ll see the girl he actually loves, and break _her_ curse, and live happily ever after. And Nigel will wrap himself up in his cloak and his gloves and his scarf and find a hole in the world again to hide away, and everything will be fine.

He feels sick.

“Well, he’s off,” the psychic says from the doorway. “Finally. Time for us to—what the fuck are you doing?”

“Oh,” Nigel says vaguely. He’s forgotten that he’s in someone else’s home. “Sorry, I just needed a minute. I’ll—I’ll go.” He struggles to his feet. It takes him a couple of tries.

The psychic’s staring at him, baffled. Nigel wonders if he can actually read his mind. He laughs, a little wildly. What does it matter now?

“Uh, dude, we’ve got to get moving. I mean, oh shit. I know the burden you carry, whatever.”

Eliot rocks back and staggers, confused. What had just happened? Had Quentin just—had he just…

“Seriously, I’ve got another part to play, here. Quentin’s off to see the traveler, so I gotta do a little room hopping, you know?”

Eliot breathes in and out. “So, he’s going. He’s going to save her, and save magic, and everything. It’s all fine?”

“As far as I can tell,” Penny says. “I mean, he seemed a lot more calm and confident in his ability to pull it off than before, so whatever you said worked.” He begins the long, complex casting that will bring not only him, but also Eliot out of the dream world.

That doesn’t make sense. Unless… Nigel had been cruel and dismissive, but maybe he wasn’t wrong? Maybe Quentin really, truly does love Alice, and this was all an aberration, and now he’s moved past his moment of doubt and returned to his original plan, to save her from herself with true love’s kiss.

The thing is, amazingly, that Eliot doesn’t believe it. That Quentin could stand there, and say all those things, and turn around and not mean them. His stomach feels like a pit of dread, even as there’s something fizzy and sparkling bubbling out of it.

This was a moment that really mattered, and he just…

“Pe—psychic, what did he say? What, exactly, did he say?”

Penny doesn’t stop his casting to bring both of them out of the spell, but he says, “Just that learned his lesson, that he finally understood what you were saying about where magic comes from.”

Magic comes from pain, Eliot remembers. Love is pain. Quentin is in love with…

“That he knows he can use the dagger to bring magic back, because he’s got a source of the most powerful magic in the world to draw on, within himself.”

The cursed world is despair, and it’s been driving Quentin to sacrifice himself. Quentin’s been resisting it on his own, but part of the reason he hasn’t succumbed has undeniably been _Nigel_. It’s been Eliot, all along. And now…

Oh, no, Eliot thinks. You fucking fuck. All you had to do was not _break his heart_, in the worst possible way, just as he goes to face down a castle that literally preys on his pain and heartbreak to try to make him give up the fight.

“Motherfucker,” he says, as the dream world disappears around him.

* * *

When Eliot opens his eyes, Penny-23 is gone. Fuck. He tries to get up from where he’s lying down on the floor of Castle Whitespire, but a number of hands come out to stop him. The rest of his friends, except for Alice.

“Take it easy,” Margo says.

“I have to—I have to go back in. You guys. Let me through,” Eliot gasps, but he stumbles as he stands, still reeling from the effects of being under the spell.

“Eliot, you have to slow down,” Kady says, “you’ve been in there for too long, it’s too taxing on the mind, and it takes it out on your body. You have to—”

“No, you don’t get it. We fucked up. I fucked it up! We have to stop him from going to the castle.”

“It’s too late,” Julia says, concerned but confused. “Penny traveled into the next room as soon as he got up, and Quentin must have reached him by now. It’s just a portal from there, into the Castle at the End of the World.”

“El, honey, what’s wrong?” Margo asks, but Eliot’s fighting against their hold, trying to get into the next room.

“You can’t go into a scene that’s already started,” Julia says. “It’ll disrupt the spellwork!”

“Then let me skip to the next one,” Eliot says. “I have to go back, I have to see him!”

“The next one is Alice!” Julia exclaims. “You want to interrupt their big romantic moment? We need them to hit that note pitch perfect and then walk out the door together, Eliot!”

Eliot feels like tearing his hair out. He looks up at the ceiling and says, as clearly as he can, “I don’t think there’s going to be a big romantic moment. I think he’s just going to walk in there and—the cursed world is _despair_, don’t you see? He’s going to be trodden down by it, and sacrifice himself, and then it’ll just start all over.”

“Yeah, I told them,” Kady says, obviously trying to reassure him. “And I warned Alice too, that she has to make him believe in the happily ever after, so he has something to hold on to, to resist the curse’s effects.”

“It’s not going to—I don’t think it’s going to work,” Eliot says miserably. He really does ruin everything he fucking touches.

“What?” Julia asks. “Listen, calm down. I’ve been thinking about what Kady was saying, and I think I’ve figured it out. If the cursed world is despair, then the antithesis is _hope_, right? It’s the last thing in Pandora’s box, the one that’s trapped. It all fits. So to break the curse, all Quentin has to do is recognize that within himself. He has to feel it, and name it, like the flowers told you, right?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. He’s not feeling it right now. No one is hopeful when they’ve just had their fucking heart broken!”

“What? But Alice is there, and if she welcomes him with open arms, then why would he feel—”

Eliot exhales. He looks at Margo, beseeching.

As always, she steps up. “Oh, you stupidly charismatic fuck,” she says. “You had a fucking puritanical curse, how did you manage to—you seduced him, didn’t you?”

“It’s much worse than that, Bambi,” he manages. “I fell—and then he—and then I—”

That’s enough for Margo to understand. She knows his damage better than anyone. She grabs his hand and drags him away, the others following behind. “Come on,” she says. “Julia’s right, you can’t go through Penny the second’s room right now, but there’s another entrance to Alice’s room on the other side. You can join as she’s casting.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Julia demands as they run through the empty rooms that had housed prior episodes of the spell, although she sounds like she’s sort of figured it out and just wants reassurance that she’s not currently on drugs.

“The dagger lit up when he thought he had to save _you_,” Kady realizes.

“Oh, you mean the true love—oh. Wait. _What_?” Josh asks.

“Eliot, wait!” Julia says urgently, as he reaches the other doorway to the final room of the spell. Alice is already deep into her spell casting, from what he can see. “If you go back now, you’ll fall into Nigel again, and there’s no one in there to remind you who you are except Alice, and she might not be in a position to realize… and if we send someone else with you, there’ll be too many of us, it might draw attention, and we can’t afford that, not at the finale. Not when we have to get him out with this one.”

Eliot takes a deep breath. “I’ll remember,” he says, leaving no room in his voice or his mind or his heart for doubt, and steps over the threshold, casting as he goes.

* * *

Nigel opens his eyes.

He’s standing in front of it, looking up at spires of the Castle at the End of the World, holding the leather pouch that Quentin had dropped at his feet when he left. The Fairy Queen’s terrible gift.

Then, he does something he has never done, in all the years since he ventured to her realm and walked away with armor that he thought was impenetrable, rendering him unable to hurt or be hurt ever again. He unfastens the twine on the pouch, and speaks the truth of himself into the vast, cold, empty whiteness of the world.

“I know the burden I carry,” he says, “and it’s my fear.”

He tips the pouch over, and what falls to the ground are simply small stones, almost pebbles, their landing hushed by the snow.

Eliot steps forward and opens the door.

* * *

**vii. The Castle at the End of the World**

He’s made it. The Castle at the End of the World.

“I suppose this is it,” Quentin says aloud, steeling himself. It’s time to face the truth of his quest, the one he realizes he’s been keeping secret even from himself, as his path has led him further and further from his original goal. But here he is. Time to do what he actually set out to do.

He takes a step in the snow, then hesitates.

He thinks about Nigel, still cursed, making his way back to Chatwin’s Torrent, perhaps, even now, and suffers one last swelling, wrenching expansion of his own heart in his chest, before he swallows it back down.

He’s failed everything and everyone he’s loved. There’s nothing heroic about him at all, nothing he has left to offer, except his pain.

Fortunately, that might be just enough for this last task.

With that, Quentin steps forward and opens the door.

“So, you’ve come,” she says. The girl he loved once, the woman she’s become. Her pretty blue eyes, unnaturally bright now, and the soft, light hair he’d adored, now almost white: still so beautiful, but icy and terrible, too.

“Here I am,” he replies.

“To save me?” she asks, and it’s funny, because it doesn’t sound mocking or villainous. It sounds almost like she’s prompting him.

“I thought—I convinced everyone, even myself, that that’s what I was setting out to do. But the truth is, you don’t need to be saved, do you? I think I’ve always known it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around,” Quentin says. “There is no Beast. You killed him, remember? But it changed you.”

She looks stunned. “Yes,” she whispers.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Quentin goes on. “But he isn’t the only one who hurt me. You did. All that magic you took into yourself… and then, you hurt others.”

“Yes,” she repeats, and she’s crying, he realizes, tears like ice.

“You hated that the world had magic, because you feared it. But you hoarded it for yourself too, because…”

“I don’t know if I could live without it,” she confesses. “I don’t know what I want.”

“You changed,” Quentin repeats. “But, it’s all right that you changed. Of course what you’ve gone through changed you. It’s changed me, too. And it’s all right if you don’t love me anymore.”

“But I do,” she says, anguished. “I do, I’m just not—”

He shakes his head, holds up a hand. “It’s okay. But please, give them their magic back. The world—people deserve a—” he breaks off, unable to complete the thought, and changes tack. “Take me instead.”

“What?”

“A willing sacrifice,” Quentin says. He holds up the knife, glittering black. “All the pain I hold within me, and you of all people know how deep the well goes. I would be a source of magic forever, more powerful than anything else in the world. So you can give them their magic back. It doesn’t matter. You’ll still be stronger. Strong enough to face anything you fear.”

All he has to do it carve it out of himself. His pain. His heart.

“You mean,” she concludes flatly, sounding a lot more like the girl he’d known, “you’re here to sacrifice yourself for the sake of the world? This is not what’s meant to happen, Quentin.”

Isn’t it? Quentin wonders. “This is what it’s all been leading up to, isn’t it?” he says. “I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t break the curse, Nigel’s curse. I still feel so—what is the point of it, all this pain, if I can’t even use it to do one good thing? Please. It’s taken me so long to get here, but—for all the things I’ve wanted, and dreamt, I see now. This is what I was always meant to do.”

He’s at peace with it. He can live with this eternity, this calm.

And then that calm is shattered, utterly, by the door opening, and Nigel crossing the threshold.

“Nigel!” Quentin gasps. “What are you—don’t hurt him!” he exclaims, instinctively stepping between them.

“I wasn’t going to,” she says, sounding rather offended. She looks up, presumably meeting Nigel’s eyes, since Quentin isn’t exactly tall enough to shield him from sight. “Eli—something’s gone terribly wrong. Oh, I—I know the—”

“It’s fine, I remember,” Nigel interrupts, inexplicably. He grabs Quentin by the shoulders and turns him around so they’re facing each other.

“Nigel, what the _fuck_ are you—”

“I’m stopping you from making a terrible mistake,” Nigel says, very tersely. “You motherfucker. Did you really think you could run off and sacrifice yourself and I’d sing a song and live out my life with _perfect aplomb_? What, did you leave me some meaningless sentimental note, too?”

“Who was I supposed to leave it with?” Quentin asks, and Nigel shoves him, but steps forward, too, closing the distance between them.

“You haven’t broken my curse yet,” Nigel says, and he’s smiling, of all things. “What kind of hero are you?”

“A failure of one!” Quentin answers, angry at him despite himself. “I couldn’t do it. I mean, you didn’t even want me to!”

“I made a mistake, too,” Nigel says, abruptly serious again, and oh, his twists and turns, will Quentin ever tire of learning them? It makes his heart ache, his breath catch, how much he still _wants_. He thought he was done with it, the wanting, but… “I was afraid. But it’s okay, right? Quentin, why is it okay to fuck up today, to get it wrong?”

“What?” Quentin asks, horribly confused by all the shifts that are happening in this conversation.

There’s desperation in the way Nigel grasps his shoulders again, meets his eyes, the way he forms the next words that come out of his mouth. “You know this. What is the thing that gets us through the pain? When everything feels pointless, and just fucking _bad_, what is it that gives us meaning? That makes us try again?”

Quentin feels the answer coming to him through a fog. Love? Love is pain, yes, but the idea that maybe it can be more than that too… It’s the expectation, he thinks, the anticipation. Sometimes it hurts more than anything else, but it’s beautiful, too: the idea that everything bad can turn good again.

“Oh,” she says, the girl he loved once, the one who hurt him, but now is trying to help him, he thinks. “Oh. Quentin, you tried to tell me. Why is it that people deserve to have magic, even if they’ve used it for ill before? Even though it has the power to hurt?”

Because just because someone’s fucked up today, doesn’t mean they can’t fix it tomorrow. Something that has the power to hurt can also have the power to heal. There’s still a chance, there’s still…

“You know this,” Nigel repeats. The man he loves now, the one who pushed him away, but then followed him here. “You have to know it. You’re the one who taught me.”

“Nigel,” he says, breathless, but the name feels wrong, and Quentin is on the cusp of something he can’t explain or put into words.

“Quentin,” Nigel replies, and it’s very close to Quentin’s lips, and Quentin registers that it’s the bare skin of Nigel’s palms framing his face, heedless of his curse. “My love,” he whispers, and presses the faintest of kisses to Quentin’s mouth, “_wake up_.”

Quentin’s closed his eyes to the kiss, but when he opens them, he’s alone in the dark. There’s a single candle burning in the corner of the room, and as he walks toward it, he can make out that he’s in the foyer of Castle Blackspire.

Oh. Everything—countless repetitions of the Library, the Monster, his death in the Mirror World—and then, this quest to save… _Alice_, with Nigel—_Eliot_—by his side—it’s all been a dream. He’s still here. He’s still trapped.

But then he sees the door. It’s the door to the Underworld, where one quest ended. It’s the door of the centaurs’ healing sanctuary, where another began. And it’s the door in and out of Blackspire.

Quentin walks toward it. He’s thinking about the flowers in Julia’s garden, and the stories they had told him. The dragon, and what she’d said about despair. How both of those had been his own voice, caught in a cursed world of despair that was trying to break him down, trying to make him see the truth.

“I’m the Monster of Blackspire,” he tries, out loud. Or at least, it lives within him, sometimes a flicker, sometimes a blaze, but always, always, burning. “The last monster in this castle, a nameless creature, the only one that Pandora managed to trap.”

Quentin smiles, voice growing stronger, pressing his palm to the door. “Yet some would say it’s the most dangerous thing of all. The gods fear my power, and mankind hates it and loves it in equal measure.” So does Quentin love and hate it, this thing within him that refuses to lie down and die.

“But the truth is, this monster can never be trapped. My power creates itself out of nothing, and destroys the hold of all other evils, even this curse. I can walk freely out of this cage,” he says, the last in a whisper as he turns the door handle, “_I hope._”

If a quest can transform its hero, the hero can also transform his quest. And so, a quest can end with a hero’s triumph: object of the quest achieved, a new order established, and a man ready to return home and go forward, altered though he may be by his experiences.

This is how the story begins: Quentin Coldwater opens a door, and steps into the foyer of Castle Whitespire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery warnings: The team figures out that the dream curse keeps Quentin trapped by perpetuating despair, trying to wear him down until he begins to believe that sacrificing himself is the only way to give his quest meaning. As a result, he experiences depressive spirals, most prominently in part v. In parts vi and vii, they culminate in him deciding to literally “cut out the pain in his own heart” and sacrifice himself to bring magic back to the world. That is as graphic as the description gets, and he doesn’t go through with it.


	3. Epilogue

**…and What Happened After**

“So,” Quentin says, “That was. Um. Interesting.”

He rubs his shoulders, one then the other, where Margo and Kady had punched him, respectively. Josh, surprisingly, had hugged him. The other Penny, completely unsurprisingly, had rolled his eyes. Julia had hugged him and _then_ punched him.

It’s nice to have friends.

Alice has been lingering back a little ways, but she smiles and holds out her hands when he steps forward toward her. He takes her hands in his own.

“So, I think we’re officially past the awkward post-break-up stage now,” she says.

“Yeah, we sort of worked out our bullshit, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” she answers. “I do love you, you know. Just—”

“I know. I do, too. I always will, Alice, because of everything you’ve been to me. But I think I’d like to get to know you, too. Who you are now. I’m sorry if I didn’t make you feel that way before.”

“I’m still getting to know me, too. But I think I’d like that, eventually,” she says, and kisses his cheek, a little stilted, but sincere. She’s the first one to leave the room. Everyone else is standing there, expectant. Ugh.

Quentin steps back and tips his head at the ceiling. Then, he turns to the corner of the room where Eliot’s been waiting his turn.

“You,” he says, and Eliot has the absolute audacity to smile at him, an embarrassed and tentative sort of smile. It is fucking adorable. Quentin is going to kill him. Or climb him like a tree, it’s not clear yet.

“Hey, you,” Eliot says, like he hasn’t just broken a curse of the old gods with a bona fide _True Love’s Kiss_.

And then Quentin’s running before he realizes it, bounding up on to the balls of his feet and crashing forward as he reaches Eliot, but it’s all right, because Eliot’s opened his arms and catches him with only a little surprised “oof,” wrapping him up and holding tight, tucking his chin over Quentin’s head as Quentin buries his face in Eliot’s chest.

They stay like that for a few seconds, just breathing. But then Quentin opens his eyes, and discovers that he’s in close proximity to the bare skin of Eliot’s neck, and he shivers. “Your—fucking—_scarf_,” he says.

“What?” Eliot asks.

Quentin pulls back just enough to grab one of Eliot’s beautiful hands, running his fingers over the soft skin reverently. He brings it up to his lips with some idea of pressing a kiss to the palm, but when he gets there, he says, “Your fucking hands, hidden in those gloves, I just can’t—” and sucks at the pulse point of Eliot’s wrist, completely heedless of their friends gawking at them from behind.

“Oh Jesus, do we have to watch this?” comes Penny’s voice.

“Shh,” Margo says, and there’s the sound of someone slapping his arm. “They’ve been suffering in silence through the taboo of touch. It’s like a period drama, and this is the good part.”

“Uh, maybe we should leave them to it?”

“Far be it for me to agree with Josh over you, Bambi,” Eliot says loudly, without moving his gaze from Quentin’s mouth.

“Oh, fine,” she says. “I’ll get the details later anyway.”

Quentin can’t even find the wherewithal to be disturbed about that, because he’s absorbed in finally getting his mouth around two of Eliot’s fingers and sucking.

“Oh my God, Q,” Eliot says, and when Quentin finally releases his fingers to look up at him, his eyes are wild.

“This is entirely your fault,” Quentin informs him, despite the irrationality of it. “Did you have to be so—you fucking tease, so covered up, and then you were _drenched in water_, and then the sword fighting, and the—”

“Hey, don’t blame me for what a snack I was in your dream,” Eliot protests. “That’s your subconscious at work, not mine.”

Quentin groans. “And that kiss. You call that a true love’s kiss? It was a peck!”

“Well, excuse me for being romantic,” Eliot says, with a laugh in his voice. “Not all of us are slaves to our base, lustful, sordid natures, hero. I’m astonished at you.”

“Oh, will you just fucking—kiss me, Eliot, _kiss_ me, please—”

And Eliot does, answering the crazed pleading in Quentin’s voice with a kiss that’s exactly as dirty and messy and desperate as everything he’s suddenly realized he needs, right now. He loses himself to it, comes to, finds himself pressed up against the doorjamb, like they were trying to go upstairs to Eliot’s room and couldn’t stop long enough to make it out the door. Eliot’s half hoisting him up with an arm wrapped around his upper thighs, and Quentin’s lifted one of his legs off the ground to try to crawl even closer, and it’s not a particularly stable or tenable position, but it’s so, so good he can’t stop.

Eventually, however, Eliot pulls back to gasp, “Not that I’m not enjoying the strain in my neck, but can we move somewhere more… horizontal?”

Quentin catches his breath as they separate, and start the long walk back to Eliot’s room. “Strain in your neck,” he repeats. “I can’t fucking believe that’s what you told me the Fairy Queen’s price was, you liar.” But he’s taking Eliot’s hand and twining their fingers together as he speaks.

“We’re both liars,” Eliot points out. “And we both came clean in the final moments. Just like any good story. Can’t give away the game too early.”

The hot, burning thing between them hasn’t died out as they get to the room and the door closes behind them, but it’s cooled off enough to think. They look at each other a little shyly, still holding hands.

“So, um. Are we going to talk about it?” Quentin asks.

He’s fully expecting that Eliot will kiss him again instead, or say something about how talking is overrated, and overthinking is uncalled for, but Eliot surprises him by saying, “You mean, about how you confessed your love and asked me to live a life with you, and I broke your heart because I was terrified, and it’s not even the first time that exact scenario has played out between us?”

Oh. Eliot’s not just talking about the dream curse. He’s actually acknowledging the Mosaic, and the throne room, something that Quentin had accepted that he would have to bury deep and never bring up again.

“I—yeah,” he says.

“Come on,” Eliot says, and tugs him over to the bed so they can sit side by side. “Listen. I made a mistake, in the throne room. And I made it again, in your dream.”

“I made a mistake, too,” Quentin admits, “when I thought that sacrificing myself for magic was the only way, and got myself trapped in this curse. And then I did it again and again, in my dream.”

“So, we’re kind of slow to learn. The fact is, we’re both kind of fucked up. We could try this, and we could, you know. Fuck it all up.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says slowly, looking down at their clasped hands, “we could. That’s true.” He lifts his eyes to meet Eliot’s. “But, it’s not the whole truth, right?”

There’s a smile hovering on Eliot’s lips that reminds Quentin bizarrely of Nigel, a soft, secret thing. “No,” he agrees. “It’s not the whole story. And I can’t deny that our characters are very compelling together.”

“There’s a lot of potential,” Quentin says, and he’s smiling too.

“There are a lot of ways it could have gone down between us, now that I think of it,” Eliot says. His voice grows more serious as he continues. “Like, what if I hadn’t been a coward in the throne room, and we’d faced all the rest of the key quest together? Maybe you wouldn’t have felt like you had to—”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have,” Quentin says. “Maybe we would have found another way, or maybe we would never have gotten magic back, and had to make our muggle ways in the world. Who knows?”

They’re both quiet for a minute, thinking about that, before Eliot speaks up again, teasing and light this time. “There are other stories, though. Of the rom-com variety, if you prefer.”

“What?”

“Like, what if there was no Beast? Just us, at Brakebills.”

“Oh,” Quentin says, cottoning on, “you mean the one where I stumble on to campus and find myself dazed not just by magic, but by the sight of a beautiful man draped across a wall…”

“And said man is a wicked upperclassman who sets his sights on seducing the innocent, unsuspecting first-year, but then…”

“He’s horrified to realize that in fact, he’s been won over by the first-year’s questionable charms…”

“And fallen ass over teakettle in love?” Eliot finishes. “That part’s even true.”

Quentin laughs a little. He can feel himself blushing. “What about the more serious version,” he says, “where there is a Beast, but… my girlfriend breaks up with me after I cheat on her with my best friend, and then she _doesn’t_ die defeating the Beast, and I don’t spend months feeling guilty and trying to bring her back and convince myself it’s because I’m still in love with her? Maybe then I realize that even though I shouldn’t have cheated with him, the way I feel about my best friend is actually—you know, not strictly friendly.”

Eliot squeezes his hand. “Maybe in that one, we get to rule Fillory side-by-side. Kings in love. There’s a lot of drama over whether the kingdom’s laws will allow us to be together, instead of marrying for random political alliances. But true love carries the day.”

“Maybe in that one, we never lose magic at all because of something I do. So I never feel like it’s my responsibility to get it back.”

“Yeah, but then we would have never gotten the Mosaic,” Eliot says, which makes Quentin’s heart ache. “And, you know. We wouldn’t have gotten…”

“What?”

“This. I think we’re selling this story short, Q. Sure, we’ve all made mistakes, and there’ve been some truly fucking awful parts that make no sense, and it’s messy, but it’s not irredeemable, right?”

“You’re right,” Quentin says. “Well, it depends on what happens next.”

“And in fact, I have it on good authority that the next chapter is an absolute pageturner.”

Quentin laughs. This is so ridiculous. “So? What happens next? I’m waiting with baited breath.”

“Well, I think this is how it goes,” Eliot says. “I kiss you,” and he does, putting his hand on Quentin’s face, drawing him in, a good kiss. Not messy and desperate like before, spinning wicked promises of what else his mouth can do, but thorough and deep and sweet, the kind of kiss that promises breakfast in the morning, for the rest of Quentin’s life.

“All right,” Quentin says, when Eliot pulls back the scantest inch. “And then?”

“And then I tell you I love you,” he says, and he leans forward to whisper in Quentin’s ear: “I love you.”

“And after that?” Quentin asks, letting his body tip backwards, wrapping his arms around Eliot’s back and pulling him down, so that Eliot’s blanketing him on the bed.

“Well, now that’s the good part,” Eliot says, and he’s working Quentin’s shirt off and pressing kisses to his chest as he speaks, reigniting that burning feeling throughout Quentin’s body as he makes his way down. “Wouldn’t want to spoil it. You might have to stick around, night after night, like the girl, in the Arabian thing.”

“Scheher—azade,” Quentin manages, voice shaking a little as Eliot sucks an extremely distracting series of gentle kisses to the soft skin above his waistband.

“Right, her. Isn’t she the one who the king threatened to kill every day until she bore him like a million sons?” Eliot muses, inexplicably. “You know, Bambi’s right. These stories _are_ all sexist.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Quentin threatens, “unless you hurry the fuck up.”

“Why, Q, anyone would think you weren’t invested in my storytelling abilities,” Eliot says, holding him down by the hips and scraping a finger lightly over one hipbone, like an absolute tease.

“Maybe, give me the abridged version,” Quentin suggests.

“Oh, all right. So they fell in love, and passed days and years and decades filled with lots of really good sex, and laughter, and songs that I’m singing, not you, and their friends and their family, and so, they—remind me, how does it go?”

Quentin laughs, closing his eyes with the sheer joy. He’s so unbelievably happy that he feels like he’s glowing again, like he’s still caught in a dream, but the real triumph of this moment is that he knows he’s awake, and he believes it. He feels like a bird set free from his cage, gazing at the wide world in wonder and realizing that he has wings to fly.

“And so, they lived happily ever after,” he says.

And so they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the most experimental and twisted thing I've ever written, so if you endured all the way to the end, thanks so much for reading, you are awesome!
> 
> Of course every interpretation of the story is valid, but if you're either very confused by what happened or interested in what I intended, here are some of my notes:  
\- My original idea was a totally different and very silly AU, and the summary boiled down to "Quentin and Eliot are two liars on a quest." That's still true here, but the frame story came later, and allowed me to integrate the fairytale into canon.  
\- The frame story started with the idea that Blackspire IS Pandora's Box, i.e. the punishment for Prometheus, and the monster inside it is the last thing she trapped, hope. Hope, of course, is also the thing that can break the dream curse. True love can mediate that, because is there any more hopeful experience than the first flush of being in love and feeling loved in return? But feeling hopeful isn't enough; Q has to recognize and name it before he can free himself.  
\- Speaking of which, even though they help each other, both Quentin and Eliot/Nigel break their own curses in the end.  
\- And finally, there MIGHT be some commentary on the nature of storytelling, and the way some people think that the grim-dark version of things is somehow more real or meaningful, and that ending a character arc with sacrifice is better than trying to figure out the rest of the character's story, but that's not what I choose to believe :)


End file.
